Aperio Implements BigTIFF, Donates Enhancements to Public Domain.Digital Pathology Leader Extends Support for TIFF Standard to Image Files Larger than 4GB, Creates World's First Terapixel Image VISTA, Calif. -- Aperio Technologies, Inc., the leading provider of digital pathology systems and services for the healthcare and life sciences industry, is pleased to announce it has implemented support for BigTIFF - Tagged Image File Format (file format, graphics) Tagged Image File Format - (TIFF) A file format used for still-image bitmaps, stored in tagged fields. Application programs can use the tags to accept or ignore fields, depending on their capabilities. for files which are larger than 4 gigabytes - across all its products and systems. This enhancement to the TIFF standard enables image files larger than 4GB to be created and processed, in a backward-compatible fashion. As part of its commitment to open standards Specifications for hardware and software that are developed by a standards organization or a consortium involved in supporting a standard. Available to the public for developing compliant products, open standards imply "open systems;" that an existing component in a system can be replaced , Aperio has donated these enhancements to the public domain, and is working with the TIFF standards body to incorporate them into a future standard release. "This enhancement makes it possible to create very large high resolution digitized images of bone marrow bone marrow, soft tissue filling the spongy interiors of animal bones. Red marrow is the principal organ that forms blood cells in mammals, including humans (see blood). In children, the bones contain only red marrow. and peripheral blood peripheral blood Cardiology Blood circulating in the system/body smears as part of my work with Aperio's new high power oil immersion immersion /im·mer·sion/ (i-mer´zhun) 1. the plunging of a body into a liquid. 2. the use of the microscope with the object and object glass both covered with a liquid. ScanScopes," stated Douglas Tkachuk, MD and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto Research at the University of Toronto has been responsible for the world's first electronic heart pacemaker, artificial larynx, single-lung transplant, nerve transplant, artificial pancreas, chemical laser, G-suit, the first practical electron microscope, the first cloning of T-cells, . Aperio's ScanScope([R]) slide scanning systems create digital images of entire microscope slides at gigapixel resolution in minutes. These digital slide images are very large, with dimensions that routinely exceed 100,000 x 100,000 pixels See pixel. . The TIFF standard is perfect for storing digital slides - it is an open standard supported by a large number of applications on a wide variety of platforms. Until recently TIFF files were limited in size to 4GB, or about 30 gigapixels. With BigTIFF support it is now possible to store images of all sizes, including those larger than 4GB, in the TIFF format. The BigTIFF design was first proposed in 2004 by Joris Van Damme of Aware Systems, and has been refined in online discussions on the TIFF message boards. "Aperio believes strongly in open standards and anticipates that with this enhancement, TIFF will continue to be the standard for storing and managing very large images such as digital slides," stated Ole Eichhorn, chief technology officer for Aperio. The libtiff library is an open-source cross-platform library which enables applications software to read and write images stored as TIFF files. A new version of libtiff has been created by Aperio which supports BigTIFF files. The new version is backward-compatible with previous versions and in many cases applications software will not have to change in order to create and process BigTIFF files. Aperio has posted detailed information at http://bigtiff.org/ including an overview of the changes, sample BigTIFF images, source code and library downloads, and technical details for the changes which have been made. As a demonstration of the new capabilities of libtiff, Aperio has created the world's first terapixel image. (1 terapixel = 1 trillion pixels.) This image is over one million pixels wide, and consists of 225 copies of a breast cancer digital slide combined together. This amazing a·maze v. a·mazed, a·maz·ing, a·maz·es v.tr. 1. To affect with great wonder; astonish. See Synonyms at surprise. 2. Obsolete To bewilder; perplex. v.intr. terapixel image was compressed into a TIFF file size of 143GB. The image may be viewed in any standard web browser The program that serves as your front end to the Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser's Location field; for example, www.computerlanguage.com, and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. using Aperio's image viewing technology at: http://bigtiff.org/terapixel.htm. About Aperio Technologies, Inc. Aperio provides systems and services for digital pathology. Our award-winning ScanScope([R]) slide scanning systems and Spectrum(TM) digital pathology information management software is helping pathology professionals around the world improve the efficiency and quality of pathology services, enhance patient care, and improve the bottom line. Applications include remote viewing, archival and retrieval, digital conferencing See teleconferencing. , research and education, and image analysis. For more information and to view a gallery of digital slides created by ScanScope Systems, visit www.aperio.com. |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion