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ImageJ

From Alfawiki
ImageJ
Company typeOpen-source software
IndustrySoftware, Image processing
Founded1997
FounderWayne Rasband
Headquarters
United States
ProductsImage processing application
OwnerNational Institutes of Health, Laboratory for Optical and Computational Instrumentation (LOCI) at University of Wisconsin
Websiteimagej.nih.gov/ij/

ImageJ is an image processing application written in Java, created collaboratively by the National Institutes of Health and the Laboratory for Optical and Computational Instrumentation (LOCI) at the University of Wisconsin. The original ImageJ 1.x version is released into the public domain, whereas ImageJ2 and associated initiatives such as SciJava, ImgLib2, and SCIFIO are distributed under a BSD-2 permissive license. Featuring an open design, ImageJ allows for enhancement through Java-based plugins and macros that can be recorded. Users can develop tailored plugins for image acquisition, analysis, and processing utilizing its integrated editor and Java compiler.

The extensive plugin framework of ImageJ supports a wide range of applications, including three-dimensional live-cell imaging, radiological image evaluation, comparative analyses across multiple systems, and automated hematology workflows. This flexibility has made ImageJ a widely adopted tool in educational settings for teaching image processing techniques.

ImageJ operates as a web applet, a downloadable program, or on any platform running Java 5 or newer. It is available for Microsoft Windows, classic Mac OS, macOS, Linux distributions, and Sharp Zaurus PDAs. The program’s source code is openly accessible to users.

Wayne Rasband, who developed the project, retired from the National Institute of Mental Health at NIH in 2010 but remains actively involved in further software development.

Features

ImageJ is capable of displaying, editing, analyzing, processing, saving, and printing images in 8-bit indexed color and grayscale, 16-bit integer, as well as 32-bit floating point formats. It supports a wide variety of image file types such as TIFF, PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP, DICOM, FITS, along with raw data formats. The software manages image stacks, which are collections of images viewed within a single window, and utilizes multithreading to perform parallel computations on multi-core processors. It provides measurements including area and pixel intensity statistics for selected regions or threshold-defined objects, distance and angle calculations, plus generation of density histograms and line profile charts. Core image processing capabilities encompass logical and arithmetic operations between images, contrast enhancement, convolution, Fourier analysis, sharpening filters, smoothing techniques, edge detection algorithms, and median filtering. Geometric transformations such as resizing, rotation, and flipping are supported as well. Users can open an unlimited number of images simultaneously, limited only by system memory.

History

Prior to the launch of ImageJ in 1997, the freeware application NIH Image was developed using Object Pascal for pre-OS X Macintosh computers. Its development continues today through Image SXM, which specializes in scanning microscope image analysis. A Windows adaptation known as Scion Image for Windows, produced by the now-defunct Scion Corporation, also exists. Both NIH Image and Scion Image remain available but are proprietary software in contrast to NIH Image’s open status.

See also

  • Eclipse ImageJ Plugin – embeds ImageJ within a versatile tabbed interface featuring macro editing and debugging capabilities.
  • Bitplane – developers of image analysis software compatible with ImageJ.
  • CellProfiler – high-throughput image analysis software that integrates workflow design incorporating ImageJ macros.
  • CVIPtools – open-source computer vision and image processing tools with graphical user interface, C libraries, and batch processing features.
  • Fiji (software) – an image processing suite built upon the ImageJ platform.
  • KNIME – an open-source data mining environment supporting image analysis developed alongside the next-generation ImageJ.
  • List of free and open-source software packages
  • Microscope image processing

External links

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