Efficient support for very large image planes

[curtis]

The current version of ImageJ provides a mechanism, the virtual stack, for handling very large datasets one image plane at a time. But there is no mechanism for working with image planes larger than available memory (e.g., 40Kx40Kx16-bit = 2.98GB).

With imglib it should be possible in principle to handle such large data planes using a clever storage strategy, but it would be nice to have at least one concrete example in code demonstrating how this should work.

[aivar]

ImgLib has provision for a CellContainer which would lend itself to paging cells in/out. My Hackathon zoom viewer hanndles images of this size.

[curtis]

This sort of testing makes sense to do as part of the 2.0-beta1 development in June.

[bdezonia]

Note that as defined we rely on the mapping from Img data to ARGBScreenImage to be 1:1. This happens in Imglib's CompositeXYProjector. In the future the projector might need a scale such that large images can map to small screen images. And the map() routine would need to be modified accordingly. Also would want a tile manager.