Posted by
Frederic V. Hessman on
Dec 14, 2009; 6:15pm
URL: http://imagej.273.s1.nabble.com/ImageJ-development-involvement-contributions-tp3690030p3690036.html
(my reply didn't make it to the list the first time)
>>> I'm not complaining, just thinking about what would be possible if
>>> ImageJ
>>> supported all the data models and world coordinate systems of just
>>> the
>>> FITS standard (generalized hyperstacks, highly non-linear
>>> coordinates,
>>> all known map-projections).
>>
>> ... IMHO you should not
>> say that a certain model is very primitive unless you have come up
>> with a
>> superior model...
I'd be happy to ablidge. These things were taken care of (literally)
ages ago in astronomy - being a small, global community, we needed
good standards early on:
- generalized hyperstacks (1981)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1981A%26AS...44..371G&db_key=AST&high=3db47576cf05893- generalized tables (1995)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1995A%26AS..113..159C&db_key=AST&high=3db47576cf06210- generalized coordinates (2002)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2002A%26A...395.1061G&db_key=AST&high=3db47576cf06933- every known map-projection (2002)
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2002A%26A...395.1077C&db_key=AST&high=3db47576cf06933Of course, this is just a data-representation made for storage (that's
what the FITS standard is all about), but the appropriate properties
of a generalized data model are well illustrated by the constraints
placed on being able to store such data. The FITS header mechanism is
primitive but easy to use and makes the bookkeeping associated with
generalized hyperstacks/tables/coordinates/world-coordinate-systems
fairly manageable (and is much more powerful than that used in TIFF or
JPEG).
Since most of you are interested in plain imaging (even if it is n-
dimensional), it was natural that ImageJ only supported the simplest
data forms, but once you get to know and love (!) ImageJ, you want to
be able to do other things as well.
Rick