idoimaging.com started as a personal project to collect information on free imaging software I could use in my daily work as a programmer in radiology. I have a couple of open source imaging projects that I have released, use many others, and was having trouble keeping up to date with new programs and releases.

Once I started collecting links, new uses kept suggesting themselves. By categorizing the programs, they became searchable through a MySQL database. This also lets me test links every week, so I can keep them up to date (we've all dealt with the lists of '404 Not Found' links). A little more programming tests for new releases every week, so I can track the latest versions. A bit more, and I added the subscription feature that notifies via email when your favorite projects come out with a new release. And so it goes on.

I've now found over 200 free medical imaging projects, ranging from single-task utilities to complete packages. Most weeks I find about one new project, one site that's changed its address, and two or three new version releases. It's pretty easy keeping up with it all because I've written programs to do most of the work. Well, all of it.

In the spirit of open source, I've used only free software in this site. All the pages are generated by Perl CGI scripts (this page and the home page are the only static HTML). The back end is a MySQL database and the HTML is generated using the Perl CGI module. Graphics are generated using the Gimp, and the site is hosted on a Linux machine running the Apache server. I'm having trouble with PNG rollover graphics, so GIF will have to do for now.

I'd like to hear from other imaging and radiology programmers, with comments or suggestions about this site, the software, or the radiology developer's community generally.

Best wishes,

Andrew Crabb
andy@idoimaging.com