LEAD Technologies, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of version 14 of LEADTOOLS, the award-winning family of imaging toolkits and plug ins.

LEADTOOLS 14 is jam-packed with leading edge technology, new features and significant enhancements to the Raster Pro, Document, Medical and Multimedia product lines with additional enhancements for Raster Imaging, Vector and .NET coming soon. With this new version, LEAD bolsters its position as the undisputed world leader in providing high end imaging toolkit products. Use the links below to quickly navigate to a topic that interests you. Then, see for yourself why LEADTOOLS is best product on the market to satisfy your imaging development needs by downloading a full featured evaluation, or by contacting PDS to order the toolkit of your choice.

Developers, welcome to the new world of imaging...

Annotations: New Objects and Features OCR Module Updates New ICR Module New OMR Module (Forms Processing) New Imaging Common Dialogs 100 Image Processing Functions	DjVu® and KDC and Several Other New Formats Medical Imaging Updates Multimedia Updates C++ Class Lib Updates COM Object Updates Including New .NET Examples Coming soon: .NET and Raster Imaging v14

V14 Annotations

LEADTOOLS Document Imaging and Medical Imaging products offer a variety of annotation (document mark-up) options that can be added to bitonal, grayscale and color images. LEADTOOLS began supporting annotation functionality in version 6.2. Since that time, the LEADTOOLS annotation feature set has grown and matured into a comprehensive collection of powerful image mark-up functions that are flexible enough to be used for general image mark-up, and precise enough for specific and demanding vertical market applications like document and medical imaging.

New annotation objects:
Several new feature-rich annotation objects have been added to LEAD's already extensive annotation object list. New objects include a Text Pointer object that can be used to place text anywhere on an image and precisely point to the area of interest. New Curve objects make drawing freehand curves a snap. There is a new PolyRuler object used for chaining multiple rulers together, while maintaining a running total of length. To provide a superior means of security and privacy, LEADTOOLS now has an Encrypt/Decrypt object to encode an area of the image without introducing any new colors, thereby maintaining higher quality with lossy compressions. Also, LEADTOOLS includes extensive support (more details below) for a RichText object. Additionally, the new annotation Video object will add multimedia capture and playback to your users image mark-up capabilities. And, if LEAD does not have a predefined annotation to meet your requirements, you can now create your own custom definable Annotation objects for an infinite number of possibilities.

Features of new RichText annotation object:

• Import and Export RTF and text files
• Font and Font style (size, bold, italic, underline, alignment, etc.)
• Font color and background color
• Bullets and Numbering
• Find and replace Text
• All Editing features (Copy, Paste, etc.)
• Printing

Other new annotation features

• Flicker free display (double-buffered).
• Fixed Annotation objects - A fixed annotation object is fixed to the window in which the annotation is being displayed, instead of the image. Useful for rulers or other objects that you do not want scrolled or zoomed off the screen.
• Tick marks for Ruler, Poly-Ruler, Cross-Product and Protractor
• Customizable cursors for the Automation object
• Rotate WMF/EMF Stamp objects
• Text Object can import/export from file
• Text Object can include tokens (ex. Date, Time, UserName, etc)
• Annotation events for all object changes/processes
• Alignment option for Text object (left, center, right)
• User Data property for all objects (gets loaded/saved with annotation data)
• Customizable object handles allow you to change the user interface of LEAD predefined objects, as well as create your own new annotation objects

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V14 Updated OCR Engine

The LEADTOOLS OCR Module is included with LEADTOOLS Document Imaging Suite and adds on to LEADTOOLS Document Imaging and Medical Imaging Products.

LEAD has updated its OCR technology and made several OCR feature enhancements in LEADTOOLS version 14. Now you can add many zoned areas to the same page and each zone can have its own options such as the OCR engine, filter and much more. LEAD makes OCR development easier in version 14 by pre-setting OCR properties that work for most images by default. To improve recognition results, LEADTOOLS OCR supports custom dictionaries to recognize words that may only exist in the documents being recognized. Other new OCR features include support for over 100 languages, output document options like document margins, paragraph options and more, as well as new output formats.

Three specialized OCR recognition engines are supported:

MOR OCR Engine

• Supports 114 languages
• Supports up to 500 zones on one image
• Supports Omnifont, Draftdot24 and OCR-A filling methods
• Supports character training to achieve improved accuracy
• Provides 3 page-level accuracy and speed trade off settings including Accurate, Balanced and Fast
• Provides Checking Subsystem based correction

MTX (Mtext) OCR Engine

• The fastest of the selectable OCR engines
• Support for 12 languages
• Supports up to 64 zones on one image
• Supports Omnifont, Draftdot9 and Draftdot24 filling methods
• Provides 2 page-level accuracy and speed trade off settings including a combined Accurate & Balanced value and Fast
• Provides Checking Subsystem based correction

FireWorX OCR Engine

• Optimized for speed
• Support for 54 languages
• Supports up to 2,500 zones on one image
• Supports Omnifont filling methods
• Supports character training to achieve improved accuracy

New output formats supported:

• Adobe PDF edited *
• Open eBook 1.0
• XML
• 2G Type 2
• 2G Type 3
• Over 40 output formats supported

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With the LEADTOOLS ICR Module, you can convert images of handwritten documents or forms in any format that LEADTOOLS supports to any of the supported output document formats. ICR is perfect for forms processing applications especially when used in conjunction with the new LEADTOOLS image registration functions and new OMR module. The LEADTOOLS ICR Module adds on to the LEADTOOLS Document Imaging Suite or the LEADTOOLS OCR module and features two recognition modules. The LEADTOOLS ICR Module can be used in the same fashion and mixed on the same image as the OCR module (set as a recognition module to ICR as a zone option). The LEADTOOLS ICR module supports hand written text in nearly 100 languages including 15 with dictionary support.

ICR recognition engines:

HNR - Hand printed numeral recognition engine is designed for a reduced character set for improved speed and accuracy. Typical recognition time is 280-310 characters per second (Measured on a computer with 1500 MHz Pentium processor / 256 MB RAM running Windows 2000.) It specializes in recognizing the following:

• digits (0-9)
• plus sign (+)
• minus sign (-)
• period or full-stop (.)
• comma (,)

RER - reRecognition Hand print recognition engine is designed to recognize upper and lower case text, numbers and symbols. Typical recognition time is 150-220 characters per second (Measured on a computer with 1500 MHz Pentium processor / 256 MB RAM running Windows 2000.)

ICR Dictionary support for the following languages:

Dictionaries are used to improve recognition results by adding words that may only be in the types of documents being recognized or specialized words that may not be in the standard dictionary.

Output formats supported:

• Adobe PDF edited *
• Open eBook 1.0
• XML
• 2G Type 2
• 2G Type 3
• Over 40 output formats supported.

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New LEADTOOLS OMR Module
A forms processing solution

The LEADTOOLS OMR Module adds on to the LEADTOOLS Document Imaging Suite or the LEADTOOLS OCR module and makes LEADTOOLS a complete forms processing solution when used in conjunction with the LEADTOOLS OCR and ICR modules. OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) is used for recognizing marks such as checkmarks on an image. Typical applications include the processing of scanned questionnaires, ballots, educational tests and reporting, and ordering sheets, where the documents to be processed are form-like and filled in by hand.

The frame can be a rectangle, a hexagon, a circle, or an ellipse and can be filled in by any method (x, tick, hatching, horizontal or vertical lines, etc.). The frame may be visible or invisible (scanner dropout) in the image sent for recognition.

OMR Benchmarks

Recognition accuracy is 99.95% and the average recognition time is 0.005 seconds per checkbox zone (measured on a computer with 166 MHz Pentium Processor / 16 MB RAM).

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V14 Common Dialogs

The LEADTOOLS Imaging Common Dialogs are available in all LEADTOOLS products and are designed to create a consistent look and feel in your application and reduces the learning curve for end-users. In version 14, LEADTOOLS has a common dialog for every image processing function.

New Imaging Common dialogs in V14:

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V14 Image Processing

New and updated image processing functions in v14:
At some point you will need to lighten a scanned image or perform some other enhancement to an image. LEAD has expanded your possibilities in LEADTOOLS version 14 by adding over 100 new image processing functions.

The LEADTOOLS Digital Paint Module is now included with all LEADTOOLS v14 products:
A must for anyone who wants to add digital painting functionality to their application. With the LEADTOOLS Digital Paint functionality, a developer can create an entire image editing or design application, or simply add pieces of those types of functionality into an existing application.

Additional color conversion enhancements:
Color conversion is an important part of image processing and can affect the quality of the final image output. LEAD has enhanced its color conversion support in LEADTOOLS so that you can now load color profiles from memory. Also, in LEADTOOLS v14 there is no need to provide a destination color profile. LEADTOOLS will automatically default to a built-in RGB destination profile if one is not provided.

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V14 New File Formats

File conversion and the ability to load and save many different formats is one of the key features that sets LEADTOOLS apart from other imaging products. Now, LEAD has expanded its extensive format support in all of the LEADTOOLS toolkits to include these frequently requested file types:

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V14 Medical Imaging Updates

Version 14 represents a major update to the LEADTOOLS Medical Imaging product line and a huge step forward for developers of scientific, medical and DICOM applications. In an effort to simplify the Medical Imaging product line, the LEADTOOLS Medical Annotation Module is now included with v14 LEADTOOLS Medical Imaging and Medical Imaging Suite. Additionally, the LEADTOOLS DICOM Communication Module and DICOM Security Module are included with the LEADTOOLS Medical Imaging Suite.

Additional LEAD products add value to LEADTOOLS Medical products:
The following products are included with LEADTOOLS Medical Imaging products making them the complete development solution.

• LEADTOOLS Multimedia for video and audio data capture (WDM, VFW, DV) and playback.
• LEAD MJPEG Codec for lossy and lossless real time MJPEG encoding and decoding (including 10-16 bit grayscale)
• LEAD JPEG2000 Codec for lossy and lossless encoding and decoding of JPEG2000 data (including 10-16 bit grayscale)
• LEAD DirectShow DICOM Read Filter -Supports JPEG2000 and JPEG lossy and lossless compression, RLE and uncompressed data
• LEAD DirectShow DICOM Write Filter - Supports JPEG2000 lossy and lossless, JPEG Lossy (including 12-bit grayscale), JPEG lossless for all bit depths supported in the DICOM standard.

LEAD has also extended its DICOM support to include the following:

Support for the latest DICOM specification
The version 14 LEADTOOLS Medical Imaging line significantly extends its position as the DICOM market leader by providing support for the latest version of the DICOM specification.

DICOM LUT/Overlay/Palette support
The high-level support for Modality LUT, VOI LUT, Palette Color Image in LEADTOOLS Medical Imaging means developers can implement DICOM Presentation state into an application with ease. LEADTOOLS can also apply the Modality LUT to the image data to further simplify image processing and statistical calculations.

DICOM Print SCU support
Add full DICOM printing support to an application in minutes with the new high-level DICOM Print support.

DICOM Annotation Object support
Store/retrieve DICOM annotations from a dataset and convert them to LEAD Annotation objects and vice versa. Annotations can also be converted to regions of interest for additional statistical calculations and for storing to DICOM Presentation State.

New Image Processing functions for Medical Imaging applications:
Below is a sample from the 100 new image processing functions added in v14.

Other new features included with the LEADTOOLS Medical Imaging v14:

• Many new annotation objects and features.
• Almost 100 new image processing functions.
• Numerous new imaging Common Dialogs.

There is no other development toolkit in the world that includes the extensive support for DICOM, Imaging and Multimedia technology as LEADTOOLS Medical Imaging Suite v14.

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V14 Updates to LEADTOOLS Multimedia

With the release of version 14, LEAD is introducing new DirectShow filters: Video motion detection, video callback and audio callback. Additionally, LEADTOOLS Multimedia products include new examples with source code that can detect motion in a video, and process any video with any of the over 200 image processing functions available in LEADTOOLS.

Changes to the LEADTOOLS Multimedia product line

• LEADTOOLS Multimedia LE is now LEADTOOLS Multimedia and features a new price of $495.
• Introducing the new LEADTOOLS Multimedia Imaging Suite - LEADTOOLS Multimedia Imaging Suite includes LEADTOOLS Multimedia, LEADTOOLS Raster Imaging Pro, the LEADTOOLS Multimedia Filter pack, LEAD MJPEG/MCMP codec, LEAD JPEG2000 codec and the LEAD MCMW codec.

New DirectShow Filters

The LEADTOOLS Multimedia Filter pack now includes new Audio and Video DirectShow filters.

LEAD Video Motion Detection Filter
Motion is emphasized by drawing a box around the motion and/or displaying a video frame of only the motion (areas of the frame without motion are black). Programatically, the filter will fire a callback each time a frame is received. If motion is detected, the bounding rectangles containing the motion can be retrieved. The possible notifications received with each frame are motion has started, motion, motion has stopped and still. Filter settings include object size, sensitivity and more.

LEAD Video Callback Filter
Each video sample is provided in the callback for additional processing before being forwarded to the next component in the graph. The filter can be used during capture, playback or conversion. The LEADTOOLS Multimedia Suite provides source code for a demo to process video with the LEADTOOLS image processing functions (over 200) as an example using this filter.

LEAD Audio Callback Filter
Each audio sample is provided in a callback for additional processing before being forwarded to the next component in the graph. This filter can be used during capture, playback or conversion.

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V14 Updates to the C++ Class Libraries

LEADTOOLS C++ class libraries are included in LEADTOOLS Raster Imaging Pro, Multimedia Imaging Suite, Document Imaging products and Medical Imaging products.

New Marker Class

The LEADTOOLS C++ class library includes a new Marker class. The Marker class will enumerate, read, modify, delete and insert markers, comments or tags in TIFF, JPEG and EXIF files. Markers in these file types can be used to hold image metadata. Metadata refers to extra information that is stored with an image, but is not necessary for decoding the image. It can contain information about the camera used to take the image, the author, date and time the image was taken, where the image was taken, whether the camera has GPS capabilities, etc.

• New Image Processing Functions
• New Annotation Features
• New Imaging Common Dialogs
• More File Format Support

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v14 Updates to the COM Objects

LEADTOOLS COM objects are included in LEADTOOLS Raster Imaging Pro, Multimedia Imaging Suite, Document Imaging products and Medical Imaging products.

COM Script full support:
LEAD has added properties and methods to the LEADTOOLS Raster COM objects specifically for scripting languages. Now all the COM objects' methods, properties and events can be used in VBScript, JavaScript and FoxPro.

Support OLE Drag in COM object:
LEAD has added support for OLE Drag and Drop to the LEADTOOLS RasterView COM object in version 14. Now the object allows you to drag its picture content and drop it into another object.

New examples in VB.NET and C#.NET for COM objects:
New source code examples that use the LEADTOOLS Raster COM objects in VB.NET and C#.NET are included in LEADTOOLS version 14.

Other new features:

• New imaging common dialogs
• New image processing functions
• New annotation controls and functions
• More file format support

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And there is more to come!

LEAD is releasing version 14 in two phases. In a matter of weeks, LEAD will release the items listed below. And, depending on the LEADTOOLS product you purchase, you may be eligible to receive the second phase at no additional charge.

• Native .NET toolkit
• Raster Imaging v14
• Vector Imaging Pro v14
• Version 14 ActiveX - Customers that upgrade LEADTOOLS Raster Imaging Pro, Document Imaging product and Medical Imaging products will receive the version 14 ActiveX at no additional charge.
• Version 14 VCL - Customers that upgrade LEADTOOLS Raster Imaging Pro, Document Imaging product and Medical Imaging products will receive the version 14 VCL at no additional charge.

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Please click here to find the latest pricing, update options and online order information with PDS. Please consult PDS if you can't find your update-option as there are many possibilities.

* This feature the requires the LEADTOOLS PDF OCR Plug In.

** LEADTOOLS Document Imaging Products, Medical Imaging Products, Multimedia Suite and Vector Imaging Pro toolkit requires runtime licensing based on the deployment of the application you develop. Several purchase options are available. For more information, please contact sales@pds-site.com.