Want to hear a cool fact? LEADTOOLS Version 18 was released one year ago (January 30th, 2013). So to celebrate V18's first birthday, LEAD is giving you a present! Today we released a major update to LEADTOOLS Version 18, highlighted by many new features and enhancements to the entire Document, Medical, Multimedia and Imaging product lines.

There is a lot to be said about this release, so your best bet is to check out the press release or see a list of all the new features and enhancements. We hope you enjoy this update and join us in saying "happy birthday LEADTOOLS V18!"

A new, major version of LEADTOOLS is right around the corner. Version 19 is packed full of incredible Document, Medical and Multimedia Imaging technology with many new features and enhancements across the board. Developers can do more than ever before with LEADTOOLS V19.

Document Imaging

• Document and image viewers for all platforms
  • New SVG engine for smooth scrolling and zooming of documents
  • Search text and use annotations on any format
  • Multi-page lazy loading for large documents
• Convert PDF & Office formats at 100% accuracy without the need for OCR
• Improved OCR accuracy for all languages including East Asian
• New barcode types: Aztec, MaxiCode & Micro QR
• Structured and unstructured forms recognition and processing with OEM-ready forms applications (checks, passports, driver licenses, invoices)
• PDF and Office format viewing, editing and conversion: convert hundreds of different file types to PDF, DOC/DOCX, RTF, HTML, XPS and more
• Powerful PDF SDK is feature packed and includes page manipulation, optimize PDF, bookmarks and metadata; create PDF/A files, PDF annotations, image extraction and more
• Zero-footprint HTML5/JavaScript UI controls & web services
• Image cleanup and pre-processing

Medical Imaging

• Comprehensive DICOM SDK supporting the latest specifications
• PACS client and server components
• Optional third-party cloud storage integration in the DICOM Storage Server
• New HL7 SDK with decoders, listener service and MWL integration
• Redesigned, highly customizable, cloud-enabled HTML5 / JavaScript zero-footprint medical viewer
• Rich Client Medical Web Viewer (IE only)
• Medical image processing
• Medical annotations and collaboration tools
• 3D volume construction and advanced visualization
• Specialized 8-16 bit grayscale image display
• OEM-ready applications with source code

Multimedia

• H.265 with 4K and 8K ultra-high-definition
• Capture, convert, stream and play audio and video
• Hundreds of formats and codecs for DirectShow and Media Foundation
  • MPEG-2 Transport Stream, H.264, MPEG-4 & more
• KLV metadata
• UAV and UAS
• Audio and video processing filters and transforms including overlays and motion detection
• DICOM reading and writing

Imaging

• Hundreds of file and image formats for loading, saving and compression
• Thousands of image processing algorithms
• New Image Viewer control for all platforms
• Scan with TWAIN from the web

More to come in the following weeks! Sign up for our newsletter to get all the latest information regarding LEADTOOLS Version 19 sent directly to your inbox.

Once again, LEAD Technologies is proud to be a part of the 9th annual National Health IT Week (September 15 - 19, 2014). Last year, over 375 organizations participated and 2014 is projected to have over 400 partners. LEAD Technologies joins with the other hundreds of companies around the country to celebrate progress and add to the conversation of how Health Information Technology is growing and improving people's health.

At its core, healthcare is performed by the many great doctors, nurses, EMTs, radiologists, and more that are directly serving their patients. However, every great front-line worker has a great supporting cast, within which Health IT gets to play a major role. The successful application of medicine and care is greatly enhanced through Electronic Health Records (EHR), Picture Archival and Communication Systems (PACS), advanced imaging technologies, infrastructure and so on. These important pieces of the overall healthcare system provide improved patient safety, fewer medical errors, earlier detection, and stronger patient/provider relationships.

Our latest white paper contains a wealth of information on selecting the right barcode for your application. There are an abundance of barcode types and sub-types, so choosing correctly from the outset can have a profound impact on your application's entire development life cycle. Common problems could be using a barcode that doesn't hold enough information, is too rigid for evolutions in your application, takes up too much physical space, fails to read when damaged, and so on.

After an introduction into different types of barcodes and their uses, this white paper then helps navigate implementing them into your application. Not all barcode SDKs are created equal, and we dive into the many advantages — both for the developer and eventual end-user — of trusting LEADTOOLS in your application. We hope you enjoy the read!

Forms recognition is a common requirement for document imaging projects. Therefore it is no surprise that there are many companies and services that provide a solution for it. With that in mind, what sets LEADTOOLS apart? Forms alignment is one of the key features that catapults LEADTOOLS Forms Recognition above other products because it offers the best accuracy across the widest gamut of devices and documents.

We have had a number of customers approach us with documents that, to the human eye, appeared to be clean and properly scanned. However, the results still failed to return accurate results. In some cases, the exact same piece of paper would produce offbeat results when using different scanners. In the following white paper we will explain several alignment problems which LEADTOOLS can automatically correct and produce better accuracy than the competition. Click the link below to read this new white paper: