Abstract: A medical imaging system for communicating image information between a plurality of different medical imaging modalities having different input protocols and a plurality of different laser imagers having different output protocols takes advantage of a reusable, object-oriented software architecture having a plurality of functionally independent components. The individual components can be configured in a communication pipeline to communicate image information between a medical imaging modality and a laser imager according to desired protocols in a networked manner. Each component can be interchanged with a differently configured component to facilitate communication of image information according to a different protocol, thereby reconfiguring the pipeline to achieve significant flexibility. The software architecture is scalable to produce a plurality of communication pipelines, each of which can be configured according to desired protocols.