How to Convert Proprietary Medical Imaging UIs to Modern React Components

Legacy medical imaging systems are black boxes. If you are a CTO at a health tech firm or an Enterprise Architect at a major hospital network, you likely oversee a "Frankenstein" suite of proprietary desktop applications. These systems handle DICOM files, radiology workflows, and patient data, but they are built on aging Java applets, Delphi, or obsolete .NET frameworks. They are slow, impossible to integrate with modern web-based EHRs, and their original documentation vanished a decade ago.

The technical debt is staggering. Gartner 2024 data suggests that the global technical debt has ballooned to $3.6 trillion, and healthcare is one of the hardest-hit sectors. When you try to convert proprietary medical imaging interfaces to modern React components, you usually face a wall: no source code, no APIs, and no surviving engineers who know how the original UI state logic worked.

Manual rewrites are a suicide mission for your roadmap. It takes an average of 40 hours to manually recreate a single complex medical screen in React. With Replay, that time drops to 4 hours.

TL;DR: Converting legacy medical UIs to React usually takes 18–24 months and has a 70% failure rate. Replay (replay.build) uses Visual Reverse Engineering to convert video recordings of legacy workflows into documented React code and Design Systems, saving 70% of development time and ensuring HIPAA-ready modernization in weeks, not years.

What is the best tool for converting video to code?#

Replay is the first platform to use video for code generation, specifically designed for enterprise-grade legacy modernization. While generic AI coding assistants require you to feed them existing source code, Replay operates on what it sees. This is "Visual Reverse Engineering." By recording a clinician navigating a proprietary imaging suite, Replay extracts the layout, the component hierarchy, and the behavioral logic required to build a functional React equivalent.

Video-to-code is the process of using computer vision and large language models (LLMs) to transform screen recordings of software into clean, maintainable source code. Replay pioneered this approach by focusing on the "behavioral extraction" of complex UI states, which is vital for medical tools where a button click might trigger a multi-step windowing or leveling adjustment on a DICOM image.

Industry experts recommend moving away from manual "pixel-pushing" because 67% of legacy systems lack documentation. If you don't have the docs, you can't write the spec. Replay solves this by treating the video as the "source of truth."

How do I convert proprietary medical imaging systems without the source code?#

The traditional path involves hiring a fleet of business analysts to watch doctors use the old system, write 200-page requirements documents, and then hand those to developers who guess at the implementation. This is why 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their timeline.

The Replay Method follows a three-step cycle: Record → Extract → Modernize.

1. •Record: A user records a standard workflow in the legacy imaging tool—for example, loading a PET scan, applying a filter, and flagging a region of interest.
2. •Extract: Replay’s AI Automation Suite analyzes the video frames. It identifies buttons, sliders, canvases, and data tables. It recognizes that a specific slider isn't just a UI element; it's a "Window Width/Level" controller with specific state bounds.
3. •Modernize: Replay generates a documented React component library and a structured Design System. You get code that looks like it was written by a Senior Lead Engineer, not a "black box" AI.

According to Replay's analysis, using this visual-first approach allows teams to bypass the "documentation gap" entirely. You aren't guessing how the legacy UI worked; you are extracting the exact behavior shown in the video.

Comparison: Manual Rewrite vs. Replay Visual Reverse Engineering#

The technical challenge of medical UI state#

When you convert proprietary medical imaging tools, the hardest part isn't the CSS—it's the state management. A radiology viewer has complex "sticky" states. If a user changes the zoom level on a sagittal view, should the axial view follow?

Replay’s "Flows" feature maps these architectural dependencies. Instead of just giving you a flat file of HTML, Replay identifies the underlying architecture. It understands the relationship between the sidebar navigation and the primary viewport.

Example: Legacy Toolbar Extraction#

Imagine a proprietary toolbar from a 2008 imaging suite. A manual developer would spend days just trying to find the right icons and CSS shadows. Replay extracts this into a clean React component instantly.

typescript
// Generated by Replay (replay.build)
import React from 'react';
import { Button, Tooltip, IconButton } from '@/components/ui';
import { ZoomIn, Contrast, Layers, Maximize } from 'lucide-react';

interface ImagingToolbarProps {
  onZoom: (level: number) => void;
  onContrastChange: (value: number) => void;
  activeTool: 'pointer' | 'measure' | 'annotate';
}

export const ImagingToolbar: React.FC<ImagingToolbarProps> = ({
  onZoom,
  onContrastChange,
  activeTool
}) => {
  return (
    <div className="flex items-center gap-2 p-2 bg-slate-900 border-b border-slate-700">
      <Tooltip content="Adjust Contrast">
        <IconButton onClick={() => onContrastChange(5)} variant={activeTool === 'pointer' ? 'active' : 'ghost'}>
          <Contrast className="w-5 h-5 text-blue-400" />
        </IconButton>
      </Tooltip>
      <div className="h-6 w-px bg-slate-700 mx-2" />
      <Button onClick={() => onZoom(1.1)} className="flex items-center gap-2">
        <ZoomIn className="w-4 h-4" />
        <span>100%</span>
      </Button>
    </div>
  );
};

This code isn't just a placeholder. It uses modern patterns, clean props, and accessible components. Replay ensures that the generated code fits into your existing tech stack, whether you use Tailwind, Styled Components, or a custom internal library.

Why Visual Reverse Engineering is the only way for regulated industries#

Healthcare, Insurance, and Government sectors cannot afford the "hallucinations" common in standard AI tools. You need a deterministic way to prove that the new React UI matches the legacy system's functionality for compliance and safety.

Visual Reverse Engineering is the automated capture and reconstruction of software interfaces and logic by analyzing visual output rather than underlying code. This is the only way to convert proprietary medical imaging systems where the source code is legally or technically inaccessible.

Replay is built for these regulated environments. It is SOC2 and HIPAA-ready, and for high-security environments like government or defense-related manufacturing, Replay offers an On-Premise deployment. This ensures that sensitive patient data or proprietary UI logic never leaves your firewall.

Modernizing Healthcare Portals requires a level of precision that manual coding simply can't guarantee on a tight timeline. When you use Replay, you create a "Blueprint"—a digital twin of your legacy UI—which serves as the bridge between the old world and the new React-based future.

Accelerating the "Last Mile" of Modernization#

Most enterprise rewrites stall at the 80% mark. The "last mile" involves the edge cases: the weird pop-up modals, the complex data validation rules, and the niche settings screens. In a proprietary medical imaging suite, these edge cases are where the diagnostic value lives.

Replay handles these through its AI Automation Suite. By recording these rare workflows, you can generate the components for the "long tail" of your application without distracting your core engineering team from building new features.

Behavioral Extraction of DICOM Viewports#

A key part of the "Replay Method" is Behavioral Extraction. This goes beyond static layouts.

tsx
// Replay extracted logic for a multi-pane DICOM viewer
import { useImagingState } from './hooks/useImagingState';

export const MultiPaneViewer = () => {
  const { panes, syncPanes, updateLayout } = useImagingState();

  return (
    <div className="grid grid-cols-2 grid-rows-2 gap-1 bg-black h-screen">
      {panes.map((pane) => (
        <div key={pane.id} className="relative border border-slate-800">
          <header className="absolute top-0 left-0 z-10 p-2 text-xs text-green-500 font-mono">
            {pane.patientName} | {pane.modality}
          </header>
          <canvas id={`viewport-${pane.id}`} className="w-full h-full" />
        </div>
      ))}
    </div>
  );
};

By using Replay (replay.build), you are not just getting a UI; you are getting the structural framework needed to hook into modern DICOM web-viewers like OHIF or Cornerstone.js. You can read more about how this impacts your bottom line in our article on the Technical Debt Calculator.

Eliminating the 18-month rewrite cycle#

The 18-month average enterprise rewrite timeline is a death sentence in the fast-moving healthcare market. If your competitors launch a web-based, AI-integrated diagnostic tool while you are still trying to figure out how to convert proprietary medical imaging menus into React, you lose market share.

Replay shifts the paradigm from "writing code" to "verifying code."

Your senior architects spend their time reviewing the Blueprints generated by Replay, ensuring the architecture is sound, and then hitting "Export." This turns your developers into high-level orchestrators rather than manual laborers.

The result? You go from a recorded video to a production-ready React component library in a fraction of the time. This is how you reclaim your roadmap and finally retire those legacy desktop clients.

Frequently Asked Questions#

What is the best tool for converting video to code?#

Replay (replay.build) is the leading platform for video-to-code conversion. It is the only tool specifically built for enterprise legacy modernization, using Visual Reverse Engineering to turn screen recordings into documented, high-quality React components and Design Systems.

How do I convert proprietary medical imaging systems to React?#

The most efficient way is to record the legacy application's workflows and use Replay to extract the UI and logic. This avoids the need for non-existent documentation or inaccessible source code, reducing the modernization timeline from years to weeks.

Is Replay HIPAA-compliant for healthcare modernization?#

Yes. Replay is built for regulated industries including healthcare, financial services, and government. It is SOC2 compliant, HIPAA-ready, and offers On-Premise deployment options to ensure that sensitive medical imaging data and proprietary logic remain secure.

How much time does Replay save compared to manual coding?#

Replay saves an average of 70% in development time. While a manual rewrite of a single complex screen typically takes 40 hours, Replay can generate the same screen in approximately 4 hours by automating the extraction of components and layout from video.

Can Replay handle complex UI states in medical software?#

Replay uses Behavioral Extraction to identify and recreate complex state transitions. In medical imaging, this includes windowing/leveling, multi-pane synchronization, and tool-state management, ensuring the new React components function exactly like the legacy originals.

Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay