Abstract: A method and software system for processing images having reconfigurable communication pipelines. The system includes an image processor that instantiates a film module and dynamically creates an image module for each image to be processed. The image processor couples each image module to the film module by a unique communication pipeline according to imaging commands received from an input imaging device. The present invention is applicable to the general field of image processing and may be implemented in any general image output device. In one embodiment, the software system is embedded in a discrete continuous tone laser imager that is directly connected to one or more medical imaging modalities. In another embodiment, the laser imager is directly connected to a network of medical imaging modalities. In yet another embodiment, the software system is executed by an intermediate computer that interfaces an output imaging device to a plurality of networked medical imaging modalities.