Change the format of an old Inbox X file

Question

I am trying to rebuild the old Stentor medical imaging format for interoperability. It was developed by a company with the same name, which was subsequently bought by Phillips. But Phillips forgot how to read Stentor files. I have a Windows program that exports JPEG from Stentor files, but its source is closed. I'd like to automate this process to allow hundreds of files in this format.

The program runs in the late 1990s Win32 or MFC. It works next to an ActiveX file (.ocx) that Ive can interact with, but this file does not contain an export method. I am looking for suggestions on how to compress binary to reveal the algorithm used to convert Stentor to JPEG. I looked at the Stentor files in a hex editor and did not find any evidence of JPEG (although hints that this would be appreciated), I think the program has a few tricks up its sleeve.

Thanks in advance.

Kyle

Answer 1

Few programmers implement complex procedures, such as image encoding itself. Instead, they tend to license libraries that do this. A very smart way to start searching for text strings and see if you can open the libraries they use. Subsequently, this will give you a lot of information about how the data is encoded.

Another good strategy is to create a program that simply launches the graphical interface of your export program by sending mouse and keyboard events directly to it. Let it end in a few days to complete the export. Reverse engineering a file format will be slow and expensive, so it probably isn’t worth it for a one-time performance.