Aperio Debuts Terapixel Image Technology

By Greg McNevin

May 10, 2007: In order to show off its latest BigTIFF image format, digital pathology specialist Aperio has released the first terapixel image ever created.

Consisting of a 225 pathology slides of breast tissue, the 143GB image vastly exceeds the 4GB limit imposed by the original TIFF format while retaining backwards compatibility.

What is more interesting, is Aperio has taken the unusual step of offering the format as open source, letting anyone and everyone take advantage of the technology. Aperio is working with the TIFF standards body to incorporate them into a future standard release.

The company says the technology’s stupendous image resolution makes it possible to create spectacularly detailed images of blood, tissue and bone marrow and has been compared to Google Earth when zooming in and out.

Scanning obviously requires specialised technology, in this case Aperio's ScanScope slide scanning system is used to create the digital images of entire microscope slides at gigapixel resolutions. The company says this process takes only minutes and produces digital slide images with dimensions that routinely exceed 100,000 x 100,000 pixels.

"Aperio believes strongly in open standards and anticipates that with this enhancement, TIFF will continue to be the standard for storing and managing very large images such as digital slides," stated Ole Eichhorn, chief technology officer for Aperio.

Of course the fact that the first terapixel image to grace the internet is a breast has also got geeks everywhere snickering.

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