Company:LEAD Technologies
File:LEAD Technologies color logo.png | |
Type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Software services |
Founded | 1990 |
Headquarters | Charlotte, North Carolina , |
Key people | Mohammad Daher (Chairman, Co-Founder) |
Products | Developer Tools |
Divisions | Medicor Imaging |
Subsidiaries | M²Solutions Inc. |
Website | LEADTOOLS.com |
LEAD Technologies Inc. is a privately held software company headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States .[1] LEAD develops and supports a line of imaging toolkits called LEADTOOLS.[2]
History
The company was founded by Mohammed Daher and Rich Little in 1990[3] as a partnership called Compression Technology, and in 1991 was incorporated as LEAD Technologies, Inc.[4] LEAD was established to commercialize Daher's inventions in the field of digital imaging and compression technology.[3]
LEADTOOLS
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LEADTOOLS, is a family of raster, document, medical, multimedia and vector imaging toolkits that allow programmers and developers to incorporate digital imaging technologies into applications that they are creating. In addition to selling LEADTOOLS directly to software developers, LEAD Technologies, its divisions and subsidiaries use the Software Development Kit (SDK) within several end user products including ePrint, MiPACS, M²Convert and FileWiggler.[5] LEADTOOLS eases the development of Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) which is the universal format of picture archiving and communication system (PACS).[6]
Technology included in LEADTOOLS SDK
- DICOM and PACS.[7][8]
- Transforms, filters, and color conversion.[7]
- Optical Character Recognition, including document image cleanup.[9]
- 3D reconstruction and 2D visualization of medical images.[10]
- Handwritten text recognition.[9]
- Medical Web Viewer Framework SDK for 2D and 3D visualizations.
- Image processing functions.[11]
- Image scanning, import, display, and other basic image processing.[11]
- Interactive Annotation Objects.
- Multimedia Engine.[12]
Divisions
In 2001, LEAD created a division called Medicor Imaging. Medicor develops and supports the MiPACS product line. Its Dental Enterprise Solution is an application for large digital dental providers such as Universities, the United States Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs.[13] When selected for use by the VA, the primary reason was that it was the only solution able to automatically acquire images from any device, view images with templates, and save images electronically to VistA imaging.[14]
Subsidiaries
In 2006, LEAD created M² Solutions, Inc. as a wholly owned subsidiary. M² develops and supports a product line called M² Convert, which helps end users convert from one multimedia format to another. M² focuses on the mobile and handheld market for people using Apple iPods and iPads, and Microsoft Windows phones.[3]
Patents
In July 1994, Daher was awarded patent #5327254, Method and Apparatus for Compressing and Decompressing Image Data. This invention became the foundation of LEAD's product line and business ventures.[15]
In early 2017, LEAD was awarded Patent #9552527. This patent describes a robust method for detecting the orientation angle of text in an image automatically without using OCR. It determines for each individual text area within an image whether it is written horizontally, vertically, or upright. This method enhances OCR accuracy, especially for Asian text which is often written vertically or a combination of vertical and horizontal text bodies. Detecting the correct angle of the text before doing OCR, improves the speed and performance of the OCR process.[16]
In mid-2019, LEAD was awarded Patent #10318563, Apparatus, Method, and Computer-Readable Medium for Recognition of a Digital Document. This patent is about using advanced computer vision to identify elements within images. Then, artificial intelligence uses the elements found to accurately determine a type of form (i.e. W-2, W-4, 1090, etc). With this patented algorithm, filled-out form images can be distorted and vary in size and resolution without affecting performance. After recognition, AI techniques are employed to provide the precise location of each field of data. Having a precise location greatly improves the accuracy of OCR when processing the forms to extract data.[17]
References
- ↑ "Lead Technologies Inc - Company Profile and News" (in en). https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/0004685D:US.
- ↑ "LEADTOOLS Toolkit Supports DICOM 3.0, Extends PACS Access" (in en). 2009-09-23. https://www.itnonline.com/content/leadtools-toolkit-supports-dicom-30-extends-pacs-access.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Leading the Way, Dahers Work to Engineer a Better World". https://www.providenceday.org/uploaded/About_PDS/Magazine/PDMag16-Spring.pdf.
- ↑ "Lead Technologies, Inc.: Private Company Information". Businessweek. http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=7884631. Retrieved 2011-07-18.
- ↑ Nelson, Mark (2003-06-23). "Dr. Dobb's Data Compression Newsletter Issue #43 – June 2003". Dr. Dobb's Journal. http://drdobbs.com/184405361. Retrieved 2011-07-18.
- ↑ Amin, Milon; Sharma, Gaurav; Parwani, Anil V.; Anderson, Ralph; Kolowitz, Brian J; Piccoli, Anthony; Shrestha, Rasu B.; Lauro, Gonzalo Romero et al. (2012-03-16). "Integration of digital gross pathology images for enterprise-wide access". Journal of Pathology Informatics 3: 10. doi:10.4103/2153-3539.93892. ISSN 2153-3539. PMID 22530178.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 "The Study of Medical Image Communication of DICOM Standard Based on LEADTOOLS--《Chinese Journal of Medical Physics》2007年01期". http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTotal-YXWZ200701006.htm.
- ↑ "A Windows-Based Interface for Teaching Image Processing". https://cate.fiu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/20171_ftp.pdf.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Development of an optical character recognition pipeline for handwritten form fields from an electronic health record". https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article-pdf/19/e1/e90/17375083/19-e1-e90.pdf.
- ↑ "2D-Visualization of 3D Medical Images within A Distributed System: A Short Survey". http://agrosy.cs.uni-kl.de/fileadmin/Literatur/Dolatabadi14a.pdf.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 "Service-based Processing and Provisioning of Image-Abstraction Techniques". 2018. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325415513_Service-based_Processing_and_Provisioning_of_Image-Abstraction_Techniques.
- ↑ A comparison of different multimedia streaming strategies over distributed IP networks.
- ↑ "Dental Imaging Software Market Present Scenario, Growth Prospects and Regional Analysis 2021-2026 – NeighborWebSJ" (in en-US). https://neighborwebsj.com/uncategorized/5303350/dental-imaging-software-market-present-scenario-growth-prospects-and-regional-analysis-2021-2026/.
- ↑ "MiPACS Dental Enterprise Imaging Solution Award Notice". www.fbo.gov. 2009-04-15. https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=8272a8c8761d74bf49d8c04732d6bec3&tab=core&_cview=0. Retrieved 2011-07-18.
- ↑ "Method and apparatus for compressing and decompressing image data" patent, issued 1992-02-19
- ↑ "Apparatus, method, and computer-readable storage medium for determining a rotation angle of text" patent, issued 2015-08-27
- ↑ "US20190258656 APPARATUS, METHOD, AND COMPUTER-READABLE MEDIUM FOR RECOGNITION OF A DIGITAL DOCUMENT". https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=US250867195&docAn=16399434.