A system and method for a hardware configuration and interfacing in a component-based environment for a medical imaging system is disclosed. Specifically, the invention directed to software architecture for the control of medical imaging system hardware is disclosed. The architecture can be logically divided into four elements: a system hardware control to provide system hardware availability information and control, a system configuration control to provide hardware constraint information, an application prescription control to identify hardware capabilities requested by a user-selected application and configure hardware settings for the system hardware, and an application hardware control to enable the application to exert control over the system hardware during execution. The architecture allows application software to be independent from hardware control software.