bioView

bioView is an open source and cross-platform application intended for biologists to visualize EM, Confocal, etc. imagery. It runs on Windows, MacOS X and Linux. It also provides access from the remote controller that simplifies usage of the very large screens e.g. 8000x4800 pixels composed by many monitors.

Contents

• Quick Start: for desktop use
• Hot Keys
• Architecture: Wall - Remote
• How to use with image walls

Quick Start: for desktop use

On the main screen you can see the image, it's associated metadata and scale bar if metadata provides pixel size information and can be parsed by the viewer. Also there's a semi-transparent controls window which shows image thumbnail allows navigation and channel manipulation. On the controls window you can:

1. Hide/show or reassign image channels to monitor color channels. Images that contain such metadata will present channel names.
2. Enable live image enhancement, these operations are done on the fly, without actual changes of the images and do not depend on image size, thus very large image can be equalized instantaneously. Current enhancements are: histogram stretching and equalization.
3. Navigate over the image and change current zoom.
4. Change current page, which might be either time or Z.
5. Visualize embedded meta-data.

Hot Keys

• Space: move to next page
• Arrow keys: move around in the image
• Page up/down: move to next/previous page

Architecture: Wall - Remote

bioView can receive external control clients, it uses TCP/IP connection and listens on the port specified in wv.ini file, the default is 9229. Upon connection client will receive preview of currently open image and enable controls.

How to use with image walls - case study

We have effectively used the client/server pair in the 20 monitor set-up. The operational system of choice was Debian Linux and we have used Distributed Multiheaded X (XDMX) that creates a virtual screen which sends commands to respective X nodes. In this set-up viewer is running on the virtual screen provided by XDMX and remote controller is running on the normal screen allowing simple navigation on the huge screen.