Charlotte, NC (February 28, 2017) - LEAD Technologies released a major update to the LEADTOOLS version 19 SDKs, which includes the first ever DICOM Hanging Protocol SDK, large image (measured in terabytes) support, document format support, and updates to various recognition technologies, including OCR, Forms, OMR, Barcode, Credit Card Reader, and Visual Studio 2017 compatibility.

"This update is a great example of how LEAD continues to advance LEADTOOLS to provide features that solve real-world problems," said Rich Little, president, LEAD Technologies, Inc. "We are very excited to have the first commercial medical viewer SDK to include full DICOM Hanging Protocol support, optimized large image loading, and a new super-fast Forms Recognition algorithm. When Moe and I started LEAD, 26 years ago, we never imagined that it would be possible to load 1TB images or determine an image was one specific form out of a 1000 in less than 2 seconds. I can't wait to see what's next."

 First Commercial DICOM Hanging Protocol SDK

LEAD's DICOM programmers have created the first commercially available, DICOM-compliant Hanging Protocol SDK. Hanging Protocol is a part of the DICOM standard to define a series of actions that the viewer applies to a study to provide optimal viewing. LEAD has added support to create, edit, query, retrieve, process, and store Hanging Protocol IODs in various parts of LEADTOOLS, including the HTML5 viewer and DICOM Storage Server. LEADTOOLS provides a full DICOM Hanging Protocol implementation that includes Priors, Cell Layout, Cell Timing, Alignment, Sorting, Patient Orientation, VOI Type, Grayscale Inverted, Image True Size, Reference Line, MPR Arrangement (Coronal, Sagittal, and Axial), Synchronized Scrolling, and Cine. Moreover, LEAD engineers streamlined the creation of Hanging Protocol IODs by allowing the end-user to set up the layout and view using their studies. Then LEADTOOLS intelligently uses the metadata of the studies to create default filters that the end-user can adjust before saving the Hanging Protocol IOD. This streamlined creation workflow removes the complexities normally associated with the creation of DICOM standard Hanging Protocol IOD.

Click here for more information on LEADTOOLS DICOM Hanging Protocol technology.

 HTML5 Zero-footprint Medical Web Viewer - New Features and Enhancements

The expert team of medical imaging developers at LEAD added many new features to the LEADTOOLS HTML5 Zero-footprint Medical Web Viewer. The viewer is an OEM-ready web application that provides a platform-independent solution to display DICOM studies for all medical disciplines and modalities. The fully customizable viewer is a powerful collection of JavaScript libraries and web services, and is perfect for any developer or integrator who needs a fast, lightweight DICOM-viewer solution without sacrificing any features that health care professionals demand.

The new features added by LEAD developers improve UX through the addition of DICOM Hanging Protocol, DICOM Basic Structured Display, 3D Cursor (i.e., spatial locater), inter-study synchronization and comparison, sorting DICOM images using various criteria, full orientation support, image laterality, field of view support, context menu for series arrangement, ultrasound calibration, lazy loading support, and overall speed gains in querying, image load, and study time-line display. Additionally, LEADTOOLS developers incorporated MRTI technology into the Viewer, opening the door to working with huge image data—e.g., typical microscopy images are 61,440 x 14,848 (2.6 GB)—using a modern web browser. Furthermore, they added enterprise-level, flexible caching to further improve speed and efficiency. Viewer UI updates included merge cells, multi-cell selection, interactive cell resize, and cell highlight. Additional updates included modality-based Window Level presets, 32-bit grayscale image Window Level, Line Profile tool, and Window Level on MPR. These great new features and enhancements continue to anchor the LEADTOOLS HTML5 Zero-footprint Medical Viewer as the top enterprise medical viewing solution.

Click here for more information on LEADTOOLS Medical Web Viewer technology.

 DICOM Storage Server - New Features

The LEADTOOLS DICOM Storage Server Framework is a collection of high-level .NET components engineered for developers and IT administrators to build robust and full-featured DICOM Storage Server systems. The skillful group of LEADTOOLS DICOM coders added even more value to the LEADTOOLS DICOM Storage Server with the addition of DICOM Hanging Protocol storage, DICOM Storage Commit, and Microsoft Message Queue.

They updated the DICOM Storage Server to provide a DICOM-standard method to store, manage, and share Hanging Protocol IODs. Additionally, they added a high-level DICOM Storage Commit Service support to LEAD's high-level DICOM Store SCU class and created a Storage Commit Add-on. These allow LEADTOOLS users to easily create (SCU) and process (SCP) Storage Commit requests. Storage Commit options provide the ability to process Storage Commit requests on the same DICOM association, a new DICOM association, or both. Finally, they added a mechanism to communicate events using the Microsoft Message Queue to integrate the LEADTOOLS DICOM Storage Server with other systems on the network, making it easier to automate workflows outside of the LEADTOOLS DICOM Storage Server.

Click here for more information on LEADTOOLS DICOM Storage Server technology.

 More Efficient Handling of DICOM Pixel Data

LEADTOOLS engineers have optimized the loading of pixel data in DICOM data sets. These optimizations reduce the memory and time required to load the pixel data.

Click here for more information on LEADTOOLS DICOM technology.

 Recognition SDK Technology - Enhancements to OCR, Forms & OMR, and New Composite Barcode Recognition

LEAD's Engineers enhanced the top-notch performance of LEADTOOLS OCR, Forms, OMR, and Barcode engines. They improved the speed of the LEADTOOLS Advantage OCR engine by as much as 67%. Additionally, following on significant improvements in the recognition results for English, French, and Japanese released earlier this year, LEAD's OCR team improved the recognition results of images containing German and Spanish character sets. Also, engineering updated the Forms engine with a new forms recognition algorithm that is specifically designed for customers with large master form repositories. In testing with a repository of 1000 master forms, the time required to determine a form's identity dropped from 16 seconds with the original recognition method to less than 2 seconds using the new additional implementation. Further, LEAD added a new OMR form alignment option in the OMR engine for forms that include a timing pattern. LEAD also added support in the Barcode engine to find and decode GS1 Composite symbols, including CC-A, CC-B, and CC-C. A GS1 Composite symbol is a combination of a linear barcode that encodes the item's primary identification, which is associated with an adjacent 2D barcode that encodes additional supplementary data.

Click here for more information on LEADTOOLS Document Engine Technology.

 Document Viewer - New Features and Enhancements

The LEADTOOLS Document Viewer SDK is an OEM-ready, document-viewing solution for .NET (C# & VB), Java, and HTML5/JavaScript. Developers can create robust, fully featured applications with rich-document viewing features, including text search, annotation, memory-efficient paging, inertial scrolling, and vector display. With only a few lines of code, the LEADTOOLS Document Viewer can be added to any project. It can be used to view raster and document formats alike, making it ideal for Enterprise Content Management (ECM), document retrieval, and document normalization solutions.

LEAD's document viewer team has worked hard to add some impressive new features to the document viewer. To start, they have added optional client-side PDF rendering, which enhances performance and reliability while reducing server load. A new virtual document concept has been created to support composing a document on the fly from any number of pages in any order and from multiple source documents. The document can be manipulated while being viewed and pages can be added or removed with code or interactively using drag and drop. Virtual documents can be saved on the server and shared with multiple users. The Document Viewer caching mechanism has been improved to allow users to create their own custom caching implementation and includes examples for SQL Server, Azure, and Ehcache. Printing was added to the document viewer, complete with paper-size selection. Additionally, side by side and overlay comparison, along with Sync Viewer UI functionality will allow users to quickly find visual differences between two or more documents.

Click here for more information on LEADTOOLS Document Viewer SDK Technology.

 Document Formats - Enhanced Support

LEAD's document format specialists have enhanced several aspects of document formats support in LEADTOOLS, including faster loading, more efficient memory usage, sharpened PDF file support, and expanded Word and Excel format features. To enhance speed, they refactored the load algorithm, which has resulted in greatly reduced load times of document formats such as PDF, MS-Office formats 97-2013 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), and TXT. Additionally, they have honed PDF features with the addition of CID-font and glyph support, faster load of very large (e.g., 10,800 x 5400 images were used during tests) image-based PDFs, and added the ability to read security information from any PDF file. Further, they have strengthened the Word and Excel features in LEADTOOLS by adding support for images and shapes behind or in line with text, multi-column document layout, spreadsheet Scale View, 3D pie, bar, and line charts, and added a new option to enable or disable the clipping of spreadsheet cell contents.

Click here for more information on LEADTOOLS Documents Technology.

About LEAD Technologies

With a rich history of more than 34 years, LEAD has established itself as the world's leading provider of software development toolkits. LEAD's flagship product, LEADTOOLS, provides programmers with a powerful set of libraries for Recognition, Document, Vector, Medical, Imaging, and Multimedia development. LEAD boasts a diverse customer base as well as a strong list of corporate partners including some of the largest and most influential organizations from around the globe. For more information, visit www.leadtools.com.