ImageLoaderPlugin

Image loader plugin for the ManiVault framework.

git clone https://github.com/ManiVaultStudio/ImageLoaderPlugin.git

Features

• Overview of image information for all image files in a given directory:
  • Size, number of points (pixels), channels and more
  • Filter images by name
• Edit meta data like data set and dimension names
• Select which dimensions are to be loaded
• Multiple image formats: PNG, JPEG, BPM and TIF/TIFF
  • RGB images
  • "High-dimensional" images, i.e. more than three values per pixel. All grayscale (single channel) image files in a folder are interpreted as part of one single image, e.g. the files in ./data/images/stack/sun/
  • Layered Tiff: Dimension (channel) names might be stored in one of several tags. Select "PageName", "ImageDescription" or a custom tag to automatically retrieve them
• Data layout interpretation:
  • Image stack (default): All same-sized, grayscale images in a folder are layered into a single image data set. Pixels at same coordinates from each layer together form a (high-dimensional) data point. Given 100 images of 28x28 pixels this loader creates a dataset of 28x28=784 data points with 100 dimensions (values per pixel). The image dimensions is 28x28 pixel.
  • Image sequence: Each same-size, grayscale image in a folder is considered a data point and each pixel is considered a dimension. Given 100 images of 28x28 pixels this loader creates a dataset of 100 data points with 28x28=784 dimensions.
• Apply data conversion:
  • If a transformation plugin is installed, like the PointDataConversionPlugin, you can apply the transformation that it provided upon loading, e.g. log2 conversions.
• Subsample images:
  • Resize an image with linear, bilinear, B-spline, bicubic, Catmull-Rom or Lanczos interpolation filter
  • Create a image pyramid of user-defined size by downsampling the image on every level

Building

This plugin depends on the FreeImage library. We build FreeImage locally from biovault/FreeImage, which wraps the library in a cmake project for simpler consumption.

The Image Loader can also make use of the Qt Imaging Formats plugin to support more than the standard QT image formats like TIFF files and WebP:

• Windows: When installing Qt6, make sure to also install the additional library Qt Imaging Formats.
• Linux: sudo apt install qt6-image-formats-plugins