Charles Thomas writes:
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I'm interested in supporting PICS stacks from an application I'm writing.
 
I would rather not lift all the code to import and export PICS stacks from
Image for several reasons:
 
1)  The application is in C and not in Pascal.
 
2)  There are several extensive information structures being dealt with in
Image's routines for opening and saving PICS files which may or may not be
relevant (e.g. InfoPtr, StackInfoPtr, etc.) and that I'd rather not deal
with.
 
3)  I'm hoping that there's an easier way.
 
So... does anyone know anything about the structure of PICS files (stacks)?
Are they NIH-Image only or are they a more standard file format?  Does
anyone know where I might be able to get some example code for opening and
saving PICS files?
 
Any help would be appreciated.
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I've been using a voxel-based 3D visualization program called VolVis for several months now. It's GNU Freeware, and the source code is included. You can reel it in from cs.sunysb.edu/pub/volvis. It comes with some utilities that, among other things, read biorad .pic files. It's in C, so you can easily hack at it and make it do what you want. This is a small but powerful tool for exploring confocal data sets, I recommend it highly. It supposedly runs on all the major UNIX boxes, but you really have to see it on an Indigo with lots of GL hardware to appreciate its power.
 
Also, the netpbm collection of bitmap processing functions has a bioradtopgm function which can extract individual frames from a .pic file. Source code in C is also provided, and it's also free. You can get netpbm at your favorite UNIX free software archive. The package allows you to convert from .pgm to several other formats. You can use xv to view the .pgms and convert them to other formats as well. xv is also free and available at most UNIX sw archives.
 
The .pic file is actually pretty simple, once you decode the 76 character header. The small white binder containing part of the MRC 600 documentation has a very brief chapter (#12, I believe) that describes the header in enough detail to allow you to write your own code.
 
Between these options, you should be able to knock off a .pic file reader in a week, tops.
 
Hope this helps you solve your problem!
 
Heinz
 
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Heinz Hemken
Departamento de Biologia Celular
CINVESTAV-IPN
PO Box 14-740
Mexico DF 07000
Mexico
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