Piecemeal programming: Creative Development doesn't make complete software packages, it builds tools that other developers can easily insert into their own creations.

Jan Dekkers loads a program on his computer to play a short MRI video of a heart pumping blood. With the click of a mouse, the gray-scale image becomes bright red and green, clearly depicting the different parts of the heart expanding and contracting.

He closes that file and opens another one a one-page letter that had been scanned into the computer. Because the page was scanned at low resolution to save hard-drive space, the text is choppy and hard to read. But with just a couple of mouse clicks by Dekkers, the letter is as clear and legible as the original.

Impressive stuff. But you won't find the software Dekkers is using on the shelves of Fry's or CompUSA.

That's because the program, made by Woodland Hills-based Creative Development Ltd., is not a complete software package in and of itself. Rather, it is a collection of software development tools that are used by other programmers, who then incorporate them into their own software.

The tools in Creative Development's package are largely used for incorporating pictures and videos into databases - an increasingly common practice as businesses and individuals store more of their files on personal computers and networks.

"The imaging is very complicated, so we already have written the tools for the application (another programmer writes)," said Dekkers, who started the company three years ago with Jillian Pinsker, his wife and the company's vice president. "Basically what they are buying are the tools to write their application without writing the imaging code."

Or, to put it in less technical terms, Creative Development sells computer programmers mini programs to be incorporated into their own software.

"It saves us an enormous amount of time," said Sean Benson, co-founder and vice president of cMore Medical Solutions Inc., a Minneapolis-based company that makes software for the health care industry.

Benson's company, which makes a database program that tracks gastrointestinal and other health problems, uses Creative Development software for incorporating videos and still pictures of a patient's digestive tract into a medical file. A doctor can then attach pointers and notes to the video or pictures, suggesting future medical procedures or tracking a patient's progress.

While other firms sell similar software products, Creative Development has an advantage in that it is royalty-free. That is, a client can use the software in a program and not have to give a percentage of sales to Creative Development, no matter how many copies of the program are sold.

That makes Creative Development attractive to small businesses like Benson's. But the company has scored some bigger clients as well - including Microsoft Cot AT&T, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Lucent Technologies Inc.

Its software tools also are used by federal and local government agencies - particularly in programs that help identify murder victims and criminals. They were used by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to identify victims and wreckage from Swissair Flight 111, which crashed just off the Nova Scotia coast on Sept. 2, killing all 229 people aboard. The software allowed the police to capture, archive and manage tens of thousands of police documents, medical records, handwritten forms and photographs.

"It's the first time I've heard of where they've used (the software) for a specific disaster like this," Pinsker said.

Dutch-born Dekkers, 42, is a self-taught programmer who once owned a medical lab in the Netherlands, where he made dental bridges, caps and other devices. In 1991, he came to the United States to head a German-based database company. But that business eventually failed.

Creative Development, which was started in a North Hollywood apartment in 1995, now runs out of a suite of offices behind Dekkers' and Pinsker's ranch-style home off Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills. In 1995, when the company started selling its software, it had just $2,000 in revenues. The following year, it quickly ramped up to $400,000. In 1998, Creative Development's sales more than doubled that - to about $950,000, Pinsker said.

The company now has seven full-time employees - including Pinsker and Dekkers - as well as more than dozen contractors it uses occasionally. Still, Dekkers does about 80 percent of the company's programming, Pinsker said.

Creative Development's basic ImageLib Corporate Suite sells for about $600. If the customer wants the original source code for the program - allowing him or her to make changes to the program itself - the price rises to about $1,000. Creative Development's medical imaging program sells for $1,500.

Dana Dill, a South Carolina programmer who used Creative Development's tools in a program that catalogs legal documents, said the prices are reasonable - particularly given the headache it saved him of programming the imaging section of the program himself.

"I didn't really want to tackle that part of the thing," he said, adding that the tools easily saved him months of programming time.

Spotlight

Creative Development Ltd.

Year Founded: 1995 Core Business: Selling image-based software tools to computer programmers Revenues in 1995: $2,000 Revenues in 1998: $950,000 Employees in 1995: 2 Employees in 1998: 7 Goal: To become the leading imaging tool in the Microsoft programming market Driving Force: Growing demand for document and medical imaging