Yesterday I was notified that my project application got accepted into Google Summer of  Code. I can't wait to begin! I'll be working for OpenMRS, a web based medical record system primarily focused on developing countries. During the summer I will make a medical image viewer with several features for studying and annotating images, typically X-ray photos.

My original application proposed to implement the image viewer as a Java applet. The plans have since been revised, and the plan now calls for an AJAX web app instead. I will be using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and  the Google Maps API during development, something I'm really looking forward to.

The change from Java applet to AJAX will lead to much better performance in low-bandwith scenarios. It will also move much of the image processing workload from the client side to the server, enabling better performance on low-end hardware but probably stressing the server somewhat more.

I will keep this blog updated with my progress during the summer, posting at least once a week.