Advanced application framework system and method for use with a diagnostic medical ultrasound streaming application

An application interface provides an environment in which applications may discover and attach to data streams. The interface facilitates efficient sharing and management of acquired data through arbitration and parallel processing: allowing multiple applications to work in parallel on the same or different data streams to implement independent or co-dependent functionality. Further, the interface acts as a bridge between system address spaces allowing applications to execute in their own address space separate from the resource intensive acquisition processes. The interface also provides an environment for prototyping applications where a user may allocate data streams to an application and debug the application's execution. Because the interface provides a standardized/normalized interface to the acquired image data, applications may be developed independent of the imaging system's implementation details, data formats and protocols.