I just realized that cornerstone had its first birthday a little over one week ago. The project started based on this discussion on comp.protocols.dicom where folks where folks were disappointed with the lack of open source image viewers. While there already was two good open source viewers (Ovyiam and DICOM Web Viewer), neither of these were architected such that I could use them to build my own web based medical image viewing applications. I was already convinced that the future of medical imaging was HTML5/JS based image viewers and being the lazy programmer that I am, didn't want to build basic image viewing functionality over and over again (I have personally coded a ww/wc algorithm at least 15 different times in various languages). I had a personal need for a javascript SDK that made it easy to display interactive medical images in a web browser - and that is how cornerstone began.
I must admit that starting cornerstone was not easy to do. I was starting a new business (Lury) and it seemed a bit crazy to spend my time writing code that I would be giving away for free. This is especially true because I had figured out a number of tricks to make client side rendering possible while the industry norm was (and still is) server side rendering. The benefits of client side rendering are compelling enough to provide the differentiation needed to make a new startup company like Lury successful in an already competitive market and giving this away for free was very hard to do.
On top of giving away some of these secrets, the code I wrote would be on display for everyone to see. While I believe I write fairly good code, I am not perfect and what is "right" can sometimes be subjective. Code reviews are actually quite common in closed source projects and it is one of the most vulnerable experiences you go through as a software developer. What happens is you get in a room with a bunch of other developers and they look at your code with a magnifying glass and give you feedback. Your "best effort" is on display and the bulk of the discussion is around how you could do better. In safe environments, these meetings are productive and are highly educational. The internet is not a safe place though and making it publicly available for everyone to see and criticize required a tremendous amount of courage.
Looking back on the past year, I can say that making cornerstone open source is the best thing I have ever done. It has brought me tremendous joy to see others using cornerstone. There are at least 50 projects that I know of using cornerstone today and probably many I don't know about. Many of these projects are positively impacting patient outcomes and probably would not have been possible without cornerstone. I have also made many new friends all over the world - some of which have given me an open invitation to stay with them whenever I might visit.
I want to say "thank you" to everyone who has supported the cornerstone project - it would not have been possible without your emails of encouragement, bug reports, bug fixes and new features. The future is bright for cornerstone and everyone is welcome to be part of this!
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