A user interface for selecting clinical applications in a medical imaging system is provided on a display and is responsive to user inputs in the medical imaging system. A request to view a study that includes a plurality of images is received. The study to be viewed is then acquired from a medical imaging system database. The acquired study is analyzed with a rule engine that executes rules on image data from the acquired study. The rule engine identifies one or more clinical applications that are appropriate for the study and identifies at least one data set from the plurality of images suited for each of the identified one or more clinical applications. One or more icons each associated with one of the identified one or more clinical applications are displayed. The one or more icons are each selectable on the user interface to initialize the associated clinical application.