2004.04.29 05:58 "Re: [Tiff] Reading and writing 3D tiff images", by Rob van den Tillaart

Hi Peter,

As far as I know the spec TIFF only supports 2D bitmaps. There are 2 ways to solve this.

- first:

Slicing your 3D data in 2D planes and store every slice in a 2D bitmap. To recreate your 3D 'bitspace' you have to read all planes. These places can be compressed with any supported lossless compression scheme.

- Second:

You could register new tags which defines a new dataformat to store the 3D data in a single entity. (see tiffspec how to register). These new tags could also include new 3D compression schemes with which I'm quite un familiar. A quick search http://www.3dcompression.com/ shows that this topic is still under research.

Question:

How big are those 3D images, are they cubical (x ~= y ~= z) or flat (x~= y >> z) of tube like (x >> y ~= z)? What are typical values for xyz?

regards,
rob tillaart