Technical Issues: Hardware and Software

Hardware Issues      Our early development required us to use the DOS/Windows platform to be compatible with the facilities available on campus for use by Duke University medical students. Hardware constraints also dictated the use of a 640 by 480 screen size, and of course the subject matter dictated that we get as close to full color graphics as possible. For public distribution of the program we wanted to have playback either from a CD or a hard drive. For convenience and security, we needed to be able to save the students test scores to a central server.

Software Tools

Comp430d.zip - Compression program On the Web, we found Compress version 4.3d which enabled us to uncompress the UNIX tar files, FTPed from the National Library of Medicine server, to a DOS based platform. Alternatively, the new Winzip for Windows '95 supports tar files.

Dr Razz - CT and MRI graphics editor (Mac)

For the CT and MR image manipulation, we used Dr. Razz. The alpha version of this freeware program is available from the University of Washington. The program enabled us to open the 16-bit CT and MR images on a Macintosh, set the levels and window the images before saving out the files as 8-bit .tiffs.

Photoshop - Image Manipulation (Win, Mac)

Most image manipulation was done with Photoshop, which was able to open the .raw files, crop, flip the images for proper clinical orientation, and to remove the image of the blue gelatin surrounding the sections. We also used it to sharpen the images, to reduce the number of colors down to 256 for minimum file size and to adjust the palettes. Additionally we used Photoshop with some custom macros to help us define the individual structures and generate their outlines.

IconAuthor - Multimedia Authoring Program

The main authoring of the program was done with IconAuthor. This multimedia authoring program uses a flow chart programming metaphor to setup the program logic and to control the on screen events. The package also includes editors for text layout and simple animations. A very powerful feature of the program is the Smart Object Editor, which enables the placement of live objects, such as buttons, graphics and hypertext links on the screen that can be used to drive events within the program. We also made heavy use of the program's ability to have overlay graphics with transparent backgrounds, which we used for structure selection and outlining.

Animator Pro - 2D animation (DOS)

We included some animations generated with Animator Pro from Autodesk. This program is a 2-D cell-based animator, with some nice optical effects.

InstallShield - Installation Generator

Finally, we used Install Shield to generate the installation program. Highly recommended, this is THE standard for Windows and Windows '95.

Program System Requirements

| Development | Demonstration of Program | Summary of Features |