Unifying biological image formats with HDF5 (original) (raw)

2009, Communications of the ACM

is visualization research scientist at Louisiana State University, specializing in astrophysics and computational fluid dynamics CHRISTOPH BEST (best@ebi.ac.uk) is project leader at the European Bioinformatics Institute, specializing in electron microscopy image informatics THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES need a generic image format suitable for long-term storage and capable of handling very large images. Images convey profound ideas in biology, bridging across disciplines. Digital imagery began 50 years ago as an obscure technical phenomenon. Now it is an indispensable computational tool. It has produced a variety of incompatible image file formats, most of which are already obsolete.