From: Timothy.Allen@dartmouth.edu (Timothy Allen)
Newsgroups: sci.geo.geology,sci.geo.meteorology
Subject: SUMMARY (part 1/2) Image Processing Software
Date: 23 Apr 92 19:20:58 GMT
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

SUMMARY OF IMAGE PROCESSING SOFTWARE, PART 1 of 2

Part 1 contains information about applications for (1) Macintosh
computers, (2) PC computers, (3) GRASS, and (4) Khoros.

Part 2 contains information about other image processing 
packages for UNIX systems (5).
 

About two weeks ago, I posted the following query to several UseNet 
newsgroups and listserv mailing lists:

"I am interested in learning about what Image Processing software 
packages people are using for the analysis of multi-band data sets, 
such as Landsat Imagery. What are the major software packages in use? 
What are the capabilities of each package -- e.g. rectification, 
classification, PC and IHS transformations, filtering, contrast 
enhancement, overlays? Is the software designed specifically for 
remote-sensing images, medical images, or more generally for any kind 
of multi-band images? What are the hardware requirements? Any special 
requirements for display systems?"

"I am particularly interested in any software for Macintosh 
platforms, but would like to hear about packages that people are 
using on PCs and UNIX workstations as well. I am familiar with 
Terra-Mar's "MicroImage" software, and have heard of "ERDAS" but know 
nothing about it. I am also familiar with some single-band image 
processing software such as the excellent public-domain "NIH Image" 
program for the Macintosh."


Below is a summary of information that I have gathered so far.  I 
apologize for any mistakes or misquotes resulting from my butchering 
-- I mean my editing -- of the responses I received.  I welcome 
comments, corrections and further contributions to this list.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Tim Allen                                    tim.allen@dartmouth.edu 
Earth Science Department, Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755 
--------------------------------------------------------------------




-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
1 - Macintosh Software
--------------------------------------------------------------------

NIH Image 
This is an excellent image processing application that is 
in the public domain.  The application, documentation and source code 
are available for anonymous ftp from alw.nih.gov.  I've used NIH 
Image to analyze scanned photographs of rock outcrops, among other 
things.

From a summary by ritley@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu: "You can get NIH Image
from
ALW.NIH.GOV (128.231.128.251) in the It has painting and manipulation
tools, a macro language, tools for measuring distances and angles, and
for
counting things. It can record sequences to be played back as a movie.
You
can invoke user-defined convolution matrix filters, such as Gaussian.
It
has a pretty powerful import capability, that lets you import raw data
in
tab-delimited ASCII, or as bytes or 2-byte quantities. The author uses
this
to read in MRI data from a proprietary system. It also does histograms
and
even 3-D plots. It is limited to 8-bits/pixel, though the 8 bits map
into a
color lookup table, as is standard on the Mac for 8-bit color. It runs
on
any Mac that has a color screen and a FPU (or you need a FPU emulator,
but
I imagine it is pretty slow)."

Frank Hoffman <hoffmann@URZDFN.KARTOGRAPHIE.TU-DRESDEN.DBP.DE> wrote: 
"We are using IMAGE from NIH (developed by Wayne Rasband) on a MAC 
machine. It works fine for manipulating not only the tomographic head 
examples but also for airphoto manipulating. I managed also a DEM 
example scanned from a "DEM-photo" with 0-255 discrete altitude 
values arranged in a TIFF-matrix. I have no idea if there is a 
possibility for multi-band images, students took the manual with 
them, so I cannot answer at this moment."

(NIH Image does not support mult-band images.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------
NCSA Image 
This is a similar program, but I didn't find it as useful 
as NIH Image.  NCSA provides a whole suite of public-domain 
visualization tools for the Macintosh, primarily aimed (I think) at 
researchers wanting to visualize results from numerical modelling 
calculations.  These applications, documentation, and source code are 
available for anonymous ftp from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu.  

Commercial versions of the NCSA programs have been developed by 
Spyglass.

Greg Radke <TNF70@isuevax.iastate.edu> wrote: "They make a series of 
products called Transform, View, Dicer, Format. Transforms allows 
data manipulation and charting configuration, while View only allows 
you to "view" and edit the "view characteristics" Dicer is allows you 
to slice through true 3-d data and see the contours, etc."  

Spyglass, Inc.
701 Devonshire Drive 
Champaign, IL  61820 
(217) 355-6000 
fax: 217 355 8925

----------------------------------------------------------------- 
Some Gray-Scale and Color photo-retouching and image processing 
software that might be useful for scientific image processing 
applications (from an article in MacUser, October 1990). Can anyone 
comment on these?

Enhance (gray-scale) 
MicroFrontier 
7650 Hickman Road 
Des Moines, IA  50322 
515-270-8109

ImageStudio (gray-scale) 
Letraset USA 
40 Eisenhower Drive 
Paramus, NJ 07653 
201-845-6100

PhotoPress (gray-scale) 
Blue Solutions 
3039 Marigold Place 
Thousand Oaks, CA 91360 
805-492-9973

Digital Darkroom (gray-scale) 
Silicon Beach Software 
9770 Carroll Ctr. Rd., Suite J 
San Diego, CA  92126 
619-695-6956

PhotoMac (color) 
Data Translation, Inc. 
100 Locke Dr. 
Marlboro, MA 01752 
508-481-3700

Adobe PhotoShop (color) 
Adobe Systems, Inc. 
1585 Charlestown Road 
PO Box 7900 
Mountain View, CA  94039-7900 
415-961-4400

Color Studio (color) 
Letraset USA 
40 Eisenhower Drive 
Paramus, NJ 07653 
201-845-6100

----------------------------------------------------------------- 
The following comments on Image Processing Applications come from the 
"Consortium for Laboratory & Industrial Applications of the 
Macintosh, Product Directory Fall 1991", and the "Apple 
Engineering/Scientific Solutions Guide - Winter 1989/90".  Again, can 
anyone comment on these?

Dapple Systems 
355 W. Olive Ave, #100 
Sunnyvale, CA 94086 
408-733-3283 
"High resolution image analysis software provides processing tools to 
work with multiple images, enhance and edit, and measure a variety of 
global or feature parameters, and interpret the data."

Visualization Workbench 
Paragon Imagine 
171 Lincoln St. 
Lowell, MA 01852 
508-441-2112 
"An electronic imaging software system that performs interactive 
image analysis and scientific 2D and 3D plotting."

PixelTools 
Perceptics 
725 Pellissippi Parkway 
Knoxville, TN 37933 
615-966-9200 
"Complete family of PixelTools (hardware accelerator and applications 
software) for scientific image processing and analysis.  Video-rate 
capture, display, processing, and analysis of high-resolution 
monochromatic and color images.  Includes C source code."

IPLab 
Signal Analytics Corp. 
374 Maple Ave. 
E Vienna, VA  22180 
703-281-3277 
FAX 703-281-2509 
"Menu-driven image processing software that supports 24-bit color or 
pseudocolor/grayscale image display and manipulation."

TCL-Image 
Perceptics Corporation 
725 Pellissippi Parkway 
Knoxville, TN 37933 
615-966-9200 
"Software package for scientific, quantitative image processing and 
analysis. It provides a complete language for the capture, 
enhancement, and extraction of quantitative information from gray-
scale images. TCL_Image has over 200 functions for image processing, 
and contains the other elements needed in a full programming language 
for algorithm development -- variables and control structures.  It is 
easily extensible through "script" (or indirect command) files.  
These script files are simply text files that contain TCL-Image 
commands.  They are executed as normal commands and include the 
ability to pass parameters.  The direct capture of video images is 
supported via popular frame grabber boards.  TCL-Image comes with the 
I-View utility that provides conversion between common image file 
types, such as PICT2 and TIFF."

Ultimage 
GTFS, Inc. 
2455 Bennett Valley Road #100C 
Santa Rosa, CA 95494 
707-579-1733 
"Scientific image processing and analysis software.  The program 
loads images with a minimum resolution of 64 by 64, a pixel depth of 
8, 16, or 32 bits, and one image plane.  Standard input and output 
formats include PICT, TIFF, SATIE, and AIPD.  Other formats can be 
imported.  Image enhancement features include lookup table 
transformations, spatial linear and non-linear filters, frequency 
filtering, arithmetic and logic operations, and geometric 
transformations, among others.  Morphological transformations include 
erosion, dilation, opening, closing, hole removal, object separation, 
and extraction of skeletons, among others.  Quantitative analysis 
provides for objects' detection, measurement, and morphological 
distribution.  Measures include area, perimeter, center of gravity, 
moment of inertia, orientation, length of relevant chords, and shape 
factors and equivalence.  Measures are saved in ASCII format.  The 
program also provides for macro scripting and integration of custom 
modules."

Image Analyst 
Automatix, Inc. 
775 Middlesex Turnpike 
Billerica, MA 01821 
508-667-7900 
"An image processing product for users who need to extract 
quantitative data from video images.  Image Analyst lets users 
configure sophisticated image processing and measurement routines 
without the necessity of knowing a programming language.  It is 
designed for such tasks at computing number and size of cells in 
images projected by video cameras attached to microscopes, or 
enhancing and measuring distances in radiographs.  Image Analyst 
provides users with an array of field-proven video analysis 
techniques that enable them to easily assemble a sequence of 
instructions to enhance feature appearance; count objects; determine 
density, shape, size, position, or movement; perform object feature 
extraction; and conduct textural analysis automatically.  Image 
Analyst works with either a framegrabber board and any standard video 
camera, or a disk-stored image."

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dimple 
Process Software Solutions, 
PO Box 2110, 
Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. 2500. 
Phone 61 42 261757  Fax 61 42 264190.

Julie Blake <julie_blake@muwayf.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:  "It is 
compatible with system 6.05 and system 7.0 , requires Mac LC or II 
series with 256 colours, with a recommended min of 6Mb of ram. It has 
the capability of reading Erdas files."

"Functions include; image enhancement, 3D and contour plots, image 
statistics, supervised and unsupervised classification, PCA and other 
image transformations. There is also a means (Image Operation 
Language or IOL) by which you can write your own transformations. 
There is no image rectification, however Dimple is compatable with 
MAPII."

"The latest version is 1.4 and it is in the beta stage of testing. 
Dimple was initially developed as a teaching tool and it is very good 
for this purpose."

Joe Miles <Joe.Miles@anu.edu.au> wrote: "Dimple runs on a colour 
Macintosh.  It is a product still in its development phase.. i.e. it 
doesn't have all the inbuilt features of [other packages], but is 
coming along nicely.  It has its own inbuilt language for writing 
"programs" for processing an image, defining convolution filters etc. 
Dimple is a full mac application with pull down menus etc... It is 
unprotected software."

"A presentation on Dimple was made by Brett Powley (one of the 
developers) at the Apple PUCC conference in Vancouver 1990."

[Julie sent me a demo version of Dimple and it is very good.]

--------------------------------------------------------------------
From: keeshu@paramount.nikhefk.nikhef.nl (Kees Huyser)

If you can get a hold of one of the old Macintosh Developer CDs, you 
might want to look at the Satellite Image Workshop program. It comes 
with a number of satellite pictures (raw data) and does all sorts of 
image enhancing on it. You'll need at least a Mac II with co-
processor; a 256 color display and a large harddisk. The program 
doesn't run under system 7.x.ATE1 V1

In the documentation the contact address is given as:  Liz Smith, Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory, MS 300-323, 4800 Oak Grove Dr,.Pasadena, CA   
91109  (818) 354-6980

--------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "James F. Palmer" <zooey%suvm.acs.syr.edu>

Among the Mac GIS systems, MAP II distributed by John Wiley has 
integrated image analysis.




-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
2 - PC Software 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

The remote sensing lab here at Dartmouth currently uses Terra-Mar's 
MicroImage, on 486 PCs with some fancy display hardware.

Terra-Mar Resource Information Services, Inc.
 1937 Landings Drive 
Mountain View, CA  94043 
415-964-6900   FAX 415-964-5430

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Schmidt <schmidt@sunset.larc.nasa.gov> wrote:

"ERDAS will do all of the things you want:  rectification, 
classification, transformations (canned & user-defined), overlays, 
filters, contrast enhancement, etc. ... I was using it on my thesis & 
then changed the topic a bit & that work became secondary."

ERDAS, Inc. 
2801 Buford Highway Suite 300 
Atlanta, GA 30329 
404-248-9000 FAX   404-248-9400

--------------------------------------------------------------------
From: NOVAK@Portland.Bitnet

I have been getting up to speed on a program called RSVGA available 
from Eidetic Digital Image Ltd. in British Columbia.  Its for IBM 
pc's or clones, cheap (about $400) and does all the stuff Erdas does 
but is not as fast or as powerful, though I have had only limited 
experience with Erdas.  I have used RSVGA with 6 of 7 Landsat bands 
and it is a good starter program except for the obtuse manual.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Joe.Miles@anu.edu.au

Microbrian Runs on an MS dos platform and uses a 32 bit graphics card 
(Vista), or an about to be released version will support a number of 
super VGA cards.  Its a full blown remote sensed data processing 
system.. It is menu driven (character based screen), but is does not 
use a windowed user interface. Its is hardware protected with a 
dongle. Mbrian = micro Barrier reef Image Anaysis System. It was 
developed by CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial 
Organization) and is marketed/ supported by MPA Australia (51 Lusher 
Road, Croydon, Victoria tel + 61 3 724 4488     fax  +61 3 724 4455) 
Contact them for pricing .. there are educational and commercial 
prices, but be prepared to set aside $A10k for the first educational 
licence.  Subsequent ones come cheaper (they need to!) It has 
installed sites worldwide.  It is widely used here at ANU.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
From: rutgers!versatc.versatec.com!rwhite (Raymond White x????)

You might want to try ovip1.zip available using anonymous FTP access 
to msdos.archive.umich.edu

-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
From a summary by ritley@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu:

PC Vista was announced in the 1989 August edition of PASP. Vista is
available via anonymous ftp from lowell.edu. Email to vista@lowell.edu
for
more details. Total size less than 20Mbytes.

Also received this info from Berkeley: The latest version of PC-Vista,
version 1.7, includes not only the source code and help files, but also
a
complete set of executable programs and a number of sample FITS images.
If
you do wish to use the source code, you will need Microsoft C, version
5.0
or later; other compilers may work, but will require substantial
modifications. Be sure to read the files PCVISTA.DOC and README.DOC
before
you do anything else. 

To receive the documentation and nine double-density (360K) floppies
(or
three quad-density 3-1/2 inch floppies (1.44M) with everything on them,
just send a request for PC-Vista, together with your name and a US-Mail
address, to 

  Office of Technology Licensing
  2150 Shattuck Ave., Suite 510
  Berkeley, Ca. 94704

Include a check (Traveller's Checks are fine) or purchase order for
$150.00
in U.S. dollars, if your address is inside the continental U.S., or
$165.00
otherwise, made out to Regents of the University of California to cover
duplication and mailing costs. Please don't send any detailed questions
about the code to the Campus Software Office -- they are merely
distributors, not support staff. If you have further questions about
PC-Vista, send E-mail to: richmond@bkyast.berkeley.edu, or US-Mail to
Michael Richmond, Astronomy Department, Campbell Hall, Berkeley, CA
94720

--------------------------------------------------------------------
From a summary by ritley@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu:

Mirage is image processing software written by Jim Gunn at the
Astrophysics
dept at Princeton. It will run on a PC among other platforms. It is a
Forth
based system - i.e. a Forth language with many image processing
displaying
functions built in. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------
From a summary by ritley@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu:

Check the latest posting on sci.astro.hubble (last one before 2/16/92).
 It
mentions a MicroSoft Windows-based program for viewing FITS format
images on
PCs with SuperVGA cards.  The mention implies that the program is still
under
development. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------
From a summary by ritley@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu:

JAVA
The software package (JAVA) that we are using is put out by Jandel
Scientific. 
Jandel Scientific, 65 Koch Road, Corte Madera, CA 94925, (415)
924-8640,
(800) 874-1888.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
From a summary by ritley@uimrl7.mrl.uiuc.edu:

Richard Berry's CCD imaging book for Willamon-Bell contains (optional?)
disks with image manipulating software. Source code is included. 




--------------------------------------------------------------------
3 - GRASS 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Several people mentioned the "public-domain" Geographic Resource 
Analysis Support System (GRASS) of the US Army Construction 
Engineering Research Lab (CERL). Many may think of GRASS as a 
Geographic Information System rather than an Image Processing 
package, although it is reported to have significant image processing 
capabilities.  I've pieced together the following information from 
some news announcements from Rob Knauerhase 
<rob@amber.cecer.army.mil> of CERL-OGI:

CERL's Office of Grass Integration (OGI) maintains an ftp server:

moon.cecer.army.mil (129.229.1.16)

Connections are only allowed during off- peak hours (weekends and 
weekdays before 8:00 A.M. and after 5:00 P.M. Central Standard time).  
Mail regarding this site should be addressed to ftp-
admin@moon.cecer.army.mil.

This location will be the new "canonical" source for GRASS software, 
as well as bug fixes, contributed sources, documentation, and other 
files. This FTP server also supports dynamic compression and 
uncompression and "tar" archiving of files.  A feature attraction of 
the server is John Parks' GRASS tutorial.  Because the manual is 
still in beta-test stage, John requests that people only acquire it 
if they are willing to review it and mail him comments/corrections.  
The OGI is not currently maintaining this document, so all 
correspondence about it should be directed to grassx@tang.uark.edu

Listserv mailing lists:

grassu-list@amber.cecer.army.mil (for GRASS users; application-level 
questions, support concerns, miscellaneous questions, etc)
Send subscribe commands to grassu-request@amber.cecer.army.mi.

grassp-list@amber.cecer.army.mil (for GRASS programmers; system-level 
questions and tips, tricks, and techniques of design and 
implementation of GRASS applications) 
Send subscribe commands to grassp-request@amber.cecer.army.mi.

Both lists are maintained by the Office of Grass Integration (subset 
of the Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Lab 
in Champaign, IL). The OGI is providing the lists as a service to the 
community; while OGI and CERL employees will participate in the 
lists, we can make no claim as to content or veracity of messages 
that pass through the list.  If you have questions, problems, or 
comments, send E-mail to lists-owner@amber.cecer.army.mil and a human 
will respond.

                       -- Comments --

Elizabeth Cheney <echeney@grits.valdosta.peachnet.edu> wrote:  "I use 
GRASS because it's public domain and can be obtained through the 
internet for free.  GRASS runs in Unix and is written in C.  The 
source code can be obtained through an anonymous ftp from the Office 
of Grass Integration.  You then compile the source code for your 
machine, using scripts provided with GRASS.  I would recommend GRASS 
for someone who already has a workstation and is on a limited budget.  
GRASS is not very user-friendly, compared to Macintosh software."

<merlin%neuro.usc.edu@usc.edu> wrote: "first review of overview 
documentation -- looks usefull -- has some pixel resampling functions 
not in other packages plus good general purpose image enhancement 
routines (fft)."

Ken Sullivan <kj@Solbourne.COM> wrote: "The company, person you 
should contact is Kelly Maurice at Vexcel Corp. in Boulder, CO.  This 
gentleman has used the GRASS software and developed multi-spectral 
(238 bands ??) volumetric rendering, full color, on Suns and 
Stardents. It was a really effective interface.  Vexcel Corp. 
currently has a contract to map part of Venus and convert the 
Magellan radar data into contour maps. You can call them at (303) 
444-0094 or email care of greg@vexcel.com 192.92.90.68  I believe :-)  
(I used to be their chief gopher)"

James F. Palmer <zooey%suvm.acs.syr.edu> wrote:  "If you are willing 
to run A/UX you could install GRASS [on a Macintosh] which has 
significant image analysis and import capabilities for satellite 
data."

gwdokokl!ahrea%UOKMAX.ECN.UOKNOR.EDU wrote:  "GRASS is public-domain, 
and can run on a high-end PC under UNIX. It is raster-based, has some 
image-processing capability, and can display vector data (but 
analysis must be done in the raster environment). I have used GRASS 
V.3 on a SUN workstation and found it easy to use. It is best, of 
course, for data that are well represented in raster (grid-cell) 
form."




-------------------------------------------------------------------- 
4 - Khoros 
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Many people mentioned Khoros, a powerful and extensive image 
processing and visualization software development environment from 
the University of New Mexico. I've pieced together the following 
information from the various news announcements and FAQs that people 
sent me:

Khoros components include a visual programming language, code 
generators for extending the visual language and adding new 
application packages to the system, an interactive user interface 
editor, an interactive image display package, an extensive library of 
image processing, numerical analysis and signal processing routines, 
and 2D/3D plotting packages:

*  X Windows Applications:
Animate - Interactive Image Sequence Display Tool
Cantata - Extensible Visual Programming Language
Concert - A system for distributed X user interfaces (groupware)
Editimage - Interactive Image Display & Manipulation Program
Xprism2 and Xprism3 - Comprehensive 2D and 3D Plotting Packages
Viewimage - A basic interactive program for surface rendering
Warpimage - An interactive program for registering and warping images

*  Data Processing Algorithms:
Khoros contains over 260 programs, in the following categories: 
arithmetic, classification, color conversion, data conversion, file 
format conversion, feature extraction, frequency filtering, matrix 
algebra (LINPACK and EISPACK), spatial filtering, morphology 
filtering, geometric manipulation, histogram manipulation, 
statistics, signal generation, linear operations, segmentation, 
spectral estimation, sub-region, and transforms. Khoros supports the 
following file formats: TIFF, pbm, BIG, DEM, DLG, ELAS, FITS, MATLAB, 
Sun raster, TGA, and xbm.

*  User Interface Tools
Preview  - Graphical User Interface Display Tool
Composer - Interactive Graphical User Interface Editor
Conductor - Code Generation Tool for a Graphical User Interface
Ghostwriter - Code Generation Tool for a Command Line User Interface
Source Configuration & Management - Tools to install and maintain a 
distributed source tree.

To run Khoros, you must have a UNIX platform running the X11R3, 
X11R4, X11R5, or OpenWindows servers. The Khoros system consists of 
~450,000 lines of C code;  you will need a maximum of 120 Megabytes 
of storage for source, documentation and binaries.  To compile 
Khoros, the system requires X11R4 (patch levels 1-18) or X11R5 client 
software from MIT and an additional 50 Megabytes of storage.

The Khoros user community has ported Khoros to various other 
platforms such as the Convex, the Sequent, Data General Aviion, 
MacII, and 386/486 machines. At this time, these platforms are not 
directly supported by the Khoros Group.

Khoros is available via anonymous ftp at no charge (from 
pprg.eece.unm.edu, 129.24.24.10, in the /pub/khoros directory), or a 
tape and printed documentation can be ordered for $250.00.  

Support is provided via both a user's group mailing-list:  
khoros@chama.eece.unm.edu  (send subscription requests to khoros-
request@chama.eece.unm.edu); and a USENET Newsgroup:  comp.soft-
sys.khoros  

For more information, send e-mail to khoros-
request@chama.eece.unm.edu.  All communication to the Khoros group 
should be via e-mail.  




--------------------------------------------------------------------
5 - Other Image Processing Software for UNIX systems
--------------------------------------------------------------------

apE 
WIT 
LaboImage 
Global Imaging Software 
IDL (IDL/PV-WAVE and IDL/SIPS)
SPAM
IMDISP 
IRAF 
AIPS 
HIPS 
RAND-CAGIS 
MicroStation Imager 
DISIMP
PCI 
BRL-CAD 

Further Information on these packages can be found in part 2 of this
post.
________________________________________________________________________
_