| Image Cytometry Standard | |
|---|---|
| Filename extension | .ics,.ids |
| Type of format | Image file formats |
TheImage Cytometry Standard (ICS) is a digital multidimensional imagefile format used inlife sciencesmicroscopy. It stores not only theimage data, but also the microscopic parameters describing the optics during the acquisition.
ICS was first proposed in: P. Dean, L. Mascio, D. Ow, D. Sudar, J. Mullikin,Proposed standard for image cytometry data files, Cytometry, n. 11, pp. 561–569, 1990[1].
The original ICS file format actually uses two separate files: a text header file with .ics extension and other, much bigger and with the actual image data, with .ids extension. This allows the compression of the data while leaving the header file accessible. On the other hand, the newer ICS2 file format uses only one single .ics file with both the header and the data together.
The .ics in the two-file format is a text file with fields separated bytabs, and lines ending with anewline character. In the newer ICS2 format this text header precedes the binary data.
The ICS format is capable of storing:
| Raster | |
|---|---|
| Raw | |
| Vector | |
| Compound | |
| Metadata |
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