B i o I m a g e X D

BioImageXD is a collaborative open source free software project, designed and developed by microscopists, cell biologists and programmers from the Universities of Jyväskylä and Turku in Finland, Max Planck Institute CBG, Dresden, Germany and collaborators worldwide.

Implementation

BioImageXD is written in Python and C++, using wxPython for the GUI, and leverages the power of the Visualisation Toolkit (VTK) for multi dimensional image processing and 3D volume rendering. BioImageXD also uses the Insight Toolkit, ITK for segmentation and other image porocessing tasks. BioimageXD works on Linux (or theoretically any UNIX with wxPython and VTK), Mac OS X 10.5, and MS Windows XP/2000 (possible Vista - untested, let is know if it works). The first windows beta version of BioImageXD was released on the 9th Feb 2006. See the download section for releases of the software.

What kinds of computer does BioImageXD work on?

BioImageXD is platform independent! BioImageXD has many functions that require a modern fast main processor, eg. colocalisation analysis on large datasets. We are trying to optimise the compilation of c++ code into execuatble binaries for SSE and alivec (modern intel, amd, and ppc G4 and G5 processors) New verisons are multi threaded, so multiple processors and dual/quad core processors are taken advantage of. Gigabyes of RAM will also help speed things up, and for 3D rendering of image data a newer graphics card with 256MB or more memory is a very good thing. Theoretically BioImageXD will run on nearly any platform/hardware with an OpenGL graphics card, but for comfortable use with large images you really need gigabytes of RAM, a modern processor running at 1.5 or more GHz, and 256 or more MB of memory on your graphics card. It probably wont work on older versions of windows like 3.1, 95 and 98. Windows 2000, XP and XP64 should work (Vista as yet untested). Apple G3 machines arent really supported as they are too slow and have insufficient graphic cards. OSX 10.4 Tiger or newer and G4, G5 or intel core processors are required for Apple Macs. Any modern Linux with hardware accelerated OpenGL graphics (DRI) will do (We have used Fedora Core and Ubuntu). If you can get VTK, ITK, python2.5, OpenGL graphics, wxPython, gcc or other compilers working on your exotic UNIX workstation or server, then BioImageXD might work on that too. You can run BioImageXD in parallel on super computers and clusters. It works well on a 8 cpu core 64 GB RAM server running 64 bit Ubuntu Linux, for working with multi gigabyte datasets that are impossible to work with on a laptop.