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Information technology in medicine is constantly changing and has a central role, especially in radiation oncology. The accurate positioning of patients is essential for good treatment, and we use radiographic images to tell us that the patient is positioned correctly. These images display the contours of bones which are then used to compare intended with actual positioning.
Image display software is provided with the linear accelerator. The software is a bitmap paint program which allows the user to manually draw contours for later comparison. This software could be improved by using automated image manipulation algorithms. However, replacing this software is difficult because of cost, copyright, license and certification problems.
In this report, we describe the use of the Java Robot class which is part of the Java platform. The Java Robot does not interfere with the original software, but does allow the user to use automated image processing algorithms which save time and work well. The software development was not difficult and was tailored to individual users' needs.