Toward an open architecture for morphometric computing.

Prototype biomedical computing and graphics systems developed since the early 1970s for computer microscopy, architectonic or morphometric analysis and visual display have been marked by the highly local character of their designs. Such approaches, while often heroic and unusually creative in character, have limited the exportability of hardware or software products to the larger biomedical community. A general systems orientation, based on a shared, "open" architecture of hardware and software, with known and published standards, is proposed. The incremental nature and funding character of such a system is also discussed.