The bug has been introduced in the version 2011-09-18_22-24-41 and may introduce minor artifacts when the library decodes lossy jpeg images stored in jpeg files or embedded in DICOM files.

A new version of Imebra that solves the bug will be released during the next few days.

A patch that fixes the error is available here: https://bitbucket.org/puntoexe/imebra/changeset/41b5421a1b7f

I really tried to like our Sharepoint installation and the custom designed app based on that, but it was as human-unfriendly as it could possibly be.So the tasks keep accumulating and the time I can dedicate to development is shrinking: I should leave development completely and just focus on the organizational tasks and keeping the team marching in unison, but unfortunately I’m one of the only two C++ developers and there is a legacy C++ app to support (all the other guys are Java devs).

The problems I faced so far:

• difficulty in keeping track of the tasks: I was told to use Groupware (our customized Sharepoint installation), but it is just crap. This has been solved by tinyPM.
  I was going to try also TargetProcess, but tinyPM could be installed on my PC for a quick test while TargetProcess required a full Window Server 2008 and I should have waited for the system administrator to approve it, an to find the right machine, and validate it, and install it, and make it work (install != work)
• difficulty in allocating time to organize the team and implement new ideas: I still spend too much time developing
• the order “code review” was systematically ignored, so now I’m acting like a code review police officer. One team member is still allergic to that
• the reports from the newly installed static analysis tool are completely ignored: I’m trying to find a nice way to force the resolution of issues reported by the tool
• My plan to create branches for the development of new features and near the release date is failing: SVN is cracking under the simplest merge operation. I would like to switch to HG but I have to plan this carefully.

In the new firm I had to learn Java, and all the odds that come with it (I’m a C++ guy, but I don’t want to start a flame war here).

During the first week I discovered that I’ve landed in the land of confusion: vague requirements, non existent design, ingenious tricks in the source code, deployed software coming from unknown SVN revisions, plenty of bugs everywhere. An exorcist was needed to turn the situation around.

Well, three weeks into the new job and I’m told: “From now on you will be the technical lead. Fix this mess”.
But I’m not an exorcist, I don’t go around with the Bible in my right arm and the Cross in the other hand.
I do have a lot of experience as developer, but I never was a technical lead: I even had to check the meaning of that on Wikipedia before accepting the new role.

In the past I saw project managers, team leaders, architects, and simple bosses, but I never saw a technical lead. What is that?
Well, it turned out that a technical lead is a lesser architect, a kind of team leader, or so I understood it.

So, during the first week as Technical Lead I had few problems.

The first problem was that nobody knew I was a technical leader: the boss told me that the announcement to the team was to be done in one week time, but I had to start immediately in my new role. Nobody couldn’t care less about my suggestions and requests.

The announcement finally came at the end of the last week, and now I’m officially the technical leader.

Today I have presented to the team how I intend to clear the mess and speed up the development, and all the team agrees on the proposed changes.

I will post a similar presentation here (I have to remove some copyrighted images that are in the official presentation), so you know how I intend to become an exorcist.

Few C++ bridge classes have been created in Imebra so SWIG could generate the JNI and the java classes. This paves the way for further Java bindings, as well as PHP and .net bindings.

The experimental SWIG interfaces have been committed in the SWIG branch of the Mercurial repository.

I will also try to compile and use the library on Android, but I cannot guarantee nothing about this…

dicom2jpeg is an application distributed with Imebra (look in the examples folder), while ffmpeg is an open source application downloadable from here or here (windows).

dicom2jpeg can convert a dicom file to one or more jpeg images, while FFMpeg is able to produce a movie (mpeg, flash and other) from a series of images. Combining them together allows us to convert a dicom file to a movie.

The version 0.0.45 of Imebra introduced a new feature to dicom2jpeg that makes it able to call directly ffmpeg with the automatic setting of few key options (like the frame rate).

In order to conver a dicom file to a flash movie, open a command line terminal and type:

dicom2jpeg pathToDicomFile pathToOutputImage -ffmpeg pathToFfmpeg pathToMovieFile

where:

• pathToDicomFile = path to the dicom file that has to be converted to a movie
• pathToOutputImage = path to the output jpeg images: e.g.: c:\temp\image.jpg will generate the series of images c:\temp\image0.jpg, c:\temp\image1.jpg, c:\temp\image2.jpg,…
  The folder where the images will be create has to exist
• pathToFfmpeg =path to the ffmpeg application. Most of the time the string ffmpeg is enough
• pathToMovieFile = path to the movie file that generated by ffmpeg, e.g.: c:\movie.flv a flash file or c:\movie.wmv to generate a windows media video file

After -ffmpeg you can specify all the options accepted by ffmpeg, using the same syntax specified in the ffmpeg manual.

Some parameters needed by ffmpeg, like the frame rate and the input images are automatically added by dicom2jpeg.

Using dicom2jpeg on a web server

Few precautions have to be taken to use dicom2jpeg on a web server.

The software may be called from several threads at the same time; it is important that when dicom2jpeg is called a fresh folder for the images and the final movie is generated, possibly using a session identifier in the folder name.

After the movie has been generated, the images or all the folder should be deleted by the calling application.

Converting a Dicom file to a video file…the commercial way

Dicom Media Bridge is a Directshow codec based on Imebra that allows Windows media applications to play Dicom files directly.

After installing Dicom Media Bridge you can play Dicom files using Windows Media Player or you can convert them to video files using Windows Media Encoder or other similar products.