Multidimensional data format specification: a generalization of the American College of Radiology-National Electric Manufacturers Association standards.

Multidimensional image data are becoming increasingly common in biomedical imaging. Three-dimensional visualization and analysis techniques based on three-dimensional image data have become an established discipline in biomedicine. Some imaging problems generate image data of even higher dimensions. It often becomes necessary, rather than just convenient, to consider the higher-dimensional data as a whole to adequately answer the underlying imaging questions. Despite this established need for convenient exchange of image and image-derived information, no exchange protocols are available that adequately meet the needs of multidimensional imaging systems. This paper describes an exchange protocol that has been designed after careful consideration of the common requirements of methodologies for visualization and analysis of multidimensional data. It is based on and is a generalization of the widely accepted American College of Radiology-National Electrical Manufacturers Association (ACR-NEMA) standards specified for two-dimensional images. It is implemented and actively being used in a data-, application-, and machine-independent software environment, being developed in the authors' department, for the visualization and analysis of multidimensional images.