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Who should read this guide?

If you are a developer interested in writing tools for a medical imaging workstation, be they related to image processing or radiology workflow, this guide may be what you need.  The intent of the ClearCanvas Application Framework (the “CC Framework” or just “Framework” for short) is to allow researchers, workflow developers, and even hobbyists to write plugins for ClearCanvas Workstation, an open source PACS viewer.  The Framework provides the infrastructure that most developers don’t want to bother writing.  This includes functionality related to DICOM connectivity, database interaction, UI management, study and image management, etc.  By providing an application platform of such high-level functions, the Framework frees the developer to concentrate on the problem domain he or she is interested in.

What you should know before you read this guide

We have chosen to develop the entire framework on Microsoft’s .NET platform (we provide some rationale for this later).  Thus, you should be familiar with what .NET is all about and should be reasonably proficient in C#.  (Theoretically, coding in VB or any other .NET language should also work.  However, our source code and samples are all in C# so you would need to do some translating between the languages.)  If .NET and C# are new to you, we suggest that you read one of the many .NET and C# primers out there.  We recommend one such resource in the Appendix.