Open Chrono-Morph Viewer (OCMV): an open-source bioimage informatics platform for 4D image data

Bioimaging is entering the era of 4D (3D+time). Optical imaging advancements are enabling dynamic studies of biology at various time scales. The 4D data from such studies have been producing revolutionary insights into biological processes but also present new challenges in data handling. Here, we present Open Chrono-Morph Viewer (OCMV), a new bioimage informatics platform designed and built specifically for this emerging 4D image data. As a standalone software, OCMV has a GUI for interaction with images and an API for scripting animations. It features novel methods that not only meet the needs for handling larger size and higher dimensionality, but also address the challenges posed by the increasingly mixed imaging scales and the limited methods for seeing inside volumes. These particularly include the clipping spline for non-planar volume clipping, the disk streaming for efficient handling of large 4D data, and the capability of having heterogenous volumes in a timeline.