Software for Scanning, Storing, and Retrieving Images

An application program for scanning and storage of images and for retrieval of the images via the World Wide Web has been written in the Java programming language to be portable to any computer and operating system that support the Java Virtual Machine 1.02. The program can be run on one computer or spread across three computers: a client, a server, and a third computer that stores the image data base. The data from scanned images are stored in the TIFF Group IV format and can be retrieved in that format or converted to portable document format (PDF) for viewing through an Applet interface; the conversion to PDF is done, on demand, by a portion of the software that resides on the server. Although the program stores files in the TIFF format, it also supports any other format, and image data stored in any format are retrieved in their native form. Once an image is scanned into the data base, it is immediately available for retrieval. The program includes callable interfaces with other data bases and application programs. It also provides capabilities for administration of the image-storage and -retrieval system.