The investigators propose to test the feasibility of developing and internet-based method of standardized software modeling that will allow rapid prototyping and publication of image processing software, as further described by their abstract: "We propose to develop a component-based software publishing paradigm that will enable researchers to quickly prototype and easily publish their image processing software of the Internet. The notion of software publishing here not only means making access to the software widely available, but it also means delivery of considerable processing power to those requiring it. This project will lay the foundation for building a distributed object computing framework in which advanced processing software developed by a community-wide collaborative effort is shared by every member, access to the processing software is ubiquitous and is not limited by local computing resources, and processing software standards can therefore emerge through community-wide evaluations. "Phase I will focus on a small scale development of a suite of software components. The components will be specified based on a composite CORBA/ JavaBean model. This will 'plug-and play' and can be visually connected to prototype a thin client/fat server application that is widely accessible through downloadable Java front-ends interacting with server-side CORBA objects. Phase II will deploy a full scale development. Although Phase I and Phase II efforts have a long range goal of standardization of processing software, they can readily be a resort for computation intensive problems such as registration of PET FDG functional images with MRI anatomical images in tumor imaging and attenuation-corrected cardiac SPECT imaging." PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: Work proposed in this grant will enable component-based image processing software development. Components can "plug-and-play" in a similar way integrated circuits are wired together. This new approach to software development can potentially open up a new market for image processing components. The products we develop will be (1) a basic set of components that simplifies "connecting" software applications to the end-user (no charge for non-commercial use); (2) skeleton code and base classes that developers can extend to wrap pieces of their software into network-ready components; (3) suites of CORBA/JavaBeans components that eliminate much of the coding difficulty and duplication of effort in developing new data processing techniques; and (4) complete network-enabled applications such as image registration and image reconstruction.
