[ome-devel] Super-Resolution standard format

[Alex Herbert]

Dear All,

I am the developer of the super-resolution software we use at the GDSC, 
University of Sussex. I'm interested in developing a more universal 
format for localisation results. My software currently has its own 
format and will load localisations using a few other formats too. 
Establishing a common format would greatly improve the analysis of data.

I have added details of my current file formats to the table created by 
Pedro Almada:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YxC_WBFEvgy5jo__0_DaC6B0kzy9ptOhc2Z284PnRhU/edit?usp=sharing

In short there is a self-documenting text format (using a header) of 
tab-delimited column data, one line per localisation; and a binary 
format that attempts to be self-documenting (using a header) but is 
probably not easy to read outside of Java, although the source code is 
available to help understand it.

The files store many fields that are specific to the fitting algorithm 
used. However the position, estimated signal in photons, and original 
image dimensions (including pixel sizes) can be extracted from the file. 
These are the principle data that should be useful to other software. 
Without the original image dimensions the results are reduced to a set 
of localisations floating in a space defined by their bounding box. This 
is not ideal for reconstructing an image or performing density analysis.

Regards,

Alex