Inventors:
Kent J. Sieffert - Minneapolis MN
Andrew R. Ihlenfeldt - Saint Paul MN
Assignee:
Eastman Kodak Company - Rochester NY
International Classification:
G06F 1500
Abstract:
A medical imaging system for communicating image information between a plurality of different medical imaging modalities having different input protocols and a plurality of different laser imagers having different output protocols takes advantage of a reusable, object-oriented software architecture having a plurality of functionally independent components. The individual components can be configured in a communication pipeline to communicate image information between a medical imaging modality and a laser imager according to desired protocols in a networked manner. Each component can be interchanged with a differently configured component to facilitate communication of image information according to a different protocol, thereby reconfiguring the pipeline to achieve significant flexibility. The software architecture is scalable to produce a plurality of communication pipelines, each of which can be configured according to desired protocols. Thus, the system can support a different protocol by either swapping components to reconfigure a single communication pipeline, or by simply selecting an alternative among a plurality of differently configured communication pipelines in the scalable architecture.
