Table 2.
A comparison of multichannel processing and visualization features in popular tools
| Amira | Imaris | Vaa3D | Volocity | FluoRender | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open Source (Free) | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Channel Number (Tested) |
RGBA | 25 | RGBA | 16a | 96b |
| Time to Load Datac | 20 min | 5 min (For 25 channels) | 2 min (w/ Renaming)/10 min | 1 min | 1 min |
| Channel Adjustment | Not interactive | Interactive | Not Interactive | Not always interactive | Interactive |
| Channel Intermixing | Depth | Depth | Depth | Depth | Multiple |
| Floating-point/Tone Mapping | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Volume Selection/Extraction | No | No | No | No | Yes |
aVolocity may have corrupted rendering results depending on the number of channels
bThe test data set contains 96 channels. More can be supported by design
cTime for an experienced user when manual work is required. An ordinary hard drive disk was used (4 TB/7200 RPM). Imaris was not able to load more than 25 channels. Therefore, the loading time was measured for 25 channels