Bio-Formats is a standalone Java library for reading and writing life sciences image file formats. It is capable of parsing both pixels and metadata for a large number of formats, as well as writing to several formats.

Bio-Formats' primary purpose is to convert proprietary microscopy data into an open standard called the OME data model, particularly into the OME-TIFF file format. See the statement of purpose for a thorough explanation and rationale.

Bio-Formats supports more than a hundred file formats.

Many software packages use Bio-Formats to read and write microscopy formats.

You can use Bio-Formats to easily support these formats in your software.

For more information, see the Bio-Formats web site.

We welcome pull requests from anyone, but ask that you please verify the following before submitting a pull request:

• verify that the branch merges cleanly into develop
• verify that the branch compiles with the clean jars tools Ant targets
• verify that the branch compiles using Maven
• verify that the branch does not use syntax or API specific to Java 1.7+
• if you are making any build system or packaging changes, verify that OMERO builds when the components/bioformats submodule is pointed to your branch
• run the unit tests (ant test) and correct any failures
• test at least one file in each affected format, using the showinf command
• internal developers only: run the data tests. against directories corresponding to the affected format(s), as well as the test_per_commit directory
• make sure that your commits contain the correct authorship information and, if necessary, a signed-off-by line
• make sure that the commit messages or pull request comment contains sufficient information for the reviewer(s) to understand what problem was fixed and how to test it