This is an archive of the old MediaWiki-based ImageJ wiki. The current website can be found at imagej.net.

ImageJ

About
ImageJ
Usage
Contributors
Governance
Funding
Citing
Contributing
Wish list

ImageJ is an open source Java image processing program inspired by NIH Image. It runs on any computer with a Java 1.8 or later virtual machine. Downloadable distributions are available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. ImageJ has a strong, established user base, with thousands of plugins and macros for performing a wide variety of tasks.

Flavors

There are a few different flavors of ImageJ with very similar names, and some confusion is inevitable. Below is a table which should help to clarify the purpose of each. For the historical context of these projects, see History below.

Name Author/Maintainer(s) Description Initiated Status
Fiji-icon.png Fiji Fiji contributors

Fiji is Just ImageJ, with extras. It is a distribution of ImageJ with many plugins useful for scientific image analysis in fields such as life sciences. It is actively maintained, with updates released often.

We recommend Fiji as the preferred version of ImageJ.

Dec. 2007 Active
Imagej2-icon.png ImageJ2

ImageJDev

ImageJ developers A new version of ImageJ targeting scientific multidimensional image data. It is a complete rewrite of ImageJ, but includes ImageJ1 with a compatibility layer, so that old-style plugins and macros can run the same as always. ImageJ2 provides several significant new features, such as an automatic updater, and improved scripting capabilities. Dec. 2009 Active
Imagej1-icon.png ImageJ1 Wayne Rasband A stable version of ImageJ which has been in development since 1997. It has a strong, established user base, with thousands of plugins and macros for performing a wide variety of tasks. 1997 Active
Imagej1-icon.png ImageJA ImageJ developers

ImageJA is a project that provides a clean Git history of ImageJ1, with a proper 'pom.xml' file so that it can be used with Maven without hassles.

It is what ImageJ2's legacy support uses at its core.

Jul. 2005 Active
ImageJFX Cyril Mongis ImageJFX is a new user interface for ImageJ, built using JavaFX. 2015 Active
Imagesxm-icon.png ImageSXM Steve Barrett Image SXM is a version of NIH Image that has been extended to handle the loading, display and analysis of scanning microscope images. May 1993 Active
Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination
AstroImageJ John Kielkopf AstroImageJ is ImageJ with astronomy plugins and macros installed. Unknown Active
ImageJ2x Rawak Software ImageJ2x is a fork of ImageJ1, modified to use a Swing interface. Unknown Last update:

May 2015

Closed-source variants
Eu-hou-logo.png SalsaJ EU-HOU SalsaJ is a closed-source fork of ImageJ1 intended for use with professional astronomy images. It was designed to be used in classrooms, and has been localized into over 30 different languages. Unknown Last update:

Oct. 2012

Obsolete variants
MBF ImageJ Tony Collins

The MBF "ImageJ for Microscopy" bundle (formerly WCIF ImageJ) is a collection of plugins and macros, collated and organized by the MacBiophotonics facility.

It went hand in hand with a comprehensive manual describing how to use the bundle with light microscopy image data. It was a great resource by microscopists, for microscopists. Unfortunately, the manual went offline in late 2012. In response, the software team at LOCI created the Cookbook user guide and update site, which includes most of the same plugins.

2005 Defunct

(Last update:
Dec. 2009)

ImageJX Grant Harris

ImageJX was created as a means to discuss and explore improvements to ImageJ. There was an ImageJX mailing list as well as an ImageJX software prototype.

The ImageJX software prototype was a proof of concept—an attempt to reorganize ImageJ's internals to make it more flexible. The prototype demonstrated this flexibility by recasting the program in Swing. The ImageJX project formed the basis of an application to NIH for funding, which is what launched the ImageJ2 project (see above).

Mar. 2009 Superceded by ImageJ2
NIH Image Wayne Rasband NIH Image is a public domain image processing and analysis program for the Macintosh. It is the direct predecessor of ImageJ, and is no longer under active development (though see ImageSXM below). 1993 or earlier Superceded by ImageJ

History

The first imaging program that Wayne Rasband developed, starting in the late 70s, was called simply "Image". It was written in Pascal, ran on PDP-11 minicomputers and ran in only 64KB of memory! Rasband started work on the second, NIH Image, in 1987 when the Mac II became available. Rasband was a Mac enthusiast, and the Mac II had card slots just like the PDP-11. Rasband started work on ImageJ in 1997, when Java was becoming popular. Rasband was intrigued by the idea of creating a version of NIH Image that would "run anywhere", including as an applet in Web browsers.

Timeline

Here is a timeline of software development related to ImageJ:

IcyMiToBoAlidaBoneJMicro-ManagerEndrovBio7OMEROCellProfilerBioImageXDBio-FormatsKNIMEVisBioITKImageJFXImageJ2ImageJXFijiMBF ImageJImageJAWCIF ImageJImageSXMImageJ1NIH Image

Publications

See also Citing.