IMcast: an object-oriented tool for image multicasting

An online still image distribution system, IMcast, was developed to support instruction in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Michigan State University. The main objective of this project was to build a system that could quickly dispense medical images from an instructor´s workstation to PCs on student desktops with no degradation in image quality. IMcast uses a client/server paradigm and is designed to take advantage of the message-based Microsoft Windows operating system. Images are transmitted using IP multicast and a negative acknowledgement protocol. Development of large software applications dictates a modular design. Object orientation facilitates this organization by forcing software components to interact with one another by way of public interfaces. The object-oriented IMcast architecture is presented