IIPImage

• • Introduction
  • History
  • Links

Introduction

Features

Now that images are bigger and bigger, distributing images for different media, such as the internet used to be a time waster task.

With the IIPImage Imaging Server everybody can quickly retrieve images optimized for the job they want. In a quick and easy way.

Based on the protocol IIP and on the concept that "for bigger an image can be, you cannot see more than the size of your media", the IIPImage system enables you to automatically generate an endless number of image variations from the same single master image. So from now on, you only need to create and maintain one version of every image.

IIPImage system sets completely new standards for image sharing and distribution.

For example publish your image gallery on the Internet is a very simple process. And Internet users can zoom in, out, rotate, examine details, apply filters, chose different spectra in multichannels images, superpose and visualise very high resolution images also in 16 bit, requiring no more than a simple dial-up connection. You can even let users browse and view images in detail from mobile devices such as PDA or mobile phones.

Technology

IIPimage is a client-server system for the remote viewing of very high resolution images.

It consists in a client-server architecture that is designed to be usable even over a slow dialup connection.

The server is a C++ plugin that can work with Apache or any other FCGI-enabled web server. Images can be viewed via a feature-rich Java client or via a Javascript client embedded within a personalised web page.

By using multi-resolution tiled TIFF images, the server is able to quickly and efficiently send only those parts of the image that the viewer wishes to see at the desired resolution. These parts are dynamically compressed with JPEG and sent to the client. The compression level used can be controlled by the client to optimize the transmission. In this way it is possible to view very large images of several gigabytes in size in real-time over the internet.

The system was originally designed for viewing very high quality images of museum paintings at resolutions of up to 42000 x 30000 pixels or more. This kind of system is also applicable to other areas such as geographical informations systems or medical imaging or for your own holiday photogallery.

A small, interesting, story

The system was originally devised by the National Gallery in London and the University of Southampton for the Viseum (1996) and Acohir (1999) European projects. The aim of these projects was to create a system for viewing very high resolution colorimetric museum images over the internet. In the case of Acohir, to extend the system to handle 3D object sequences. A published paper describing this work is available online. The current versions of the software, though, have been completely rewritten since then.

Links

Feel free if you use IIPImage on your website to contact us, this way we can link to you and keep trace of our work :)
Feel free also to donate to the project to help us in continue developing :)

Mailing lists and forums etc are hosted at our Sourceforge project page.

Tiled Pyramidal TIFF images can easily be generated by the VIPS image processing system or by you preferred capable image processer.

Tested with:

We use workstation based on GNU/Linux.

Main develps was made following main standards.

Others webservers are now supported, like - Thanks to Giuseppe (Rocky_10_Balboa)

Obviously html, css, javascript etc etc are made to be usable on !

Used by:

A nice demo of a javascript-based client is available at the National Gallery showing a couple of paintings in high resolution. This uses a test version of the next server release incorporating several new upcoming features such as contrast control and 16 bit image handling. The demos also allow the user to blend between colour and X-ray images.

The EROS museum database system in use at the research centre of the Louvre museum also uses IIPimage.

The Institute of Photogammetry at the University of Lausanne uses IIPimage for their high resolution satellite images.

Denis Pitzalis' homepage.