259 Stratford Road Brooklyn, NY 11218-4313 (212) 998-7857 landy@nyu.edu

HIPS is a general-purpose software package for image processing that runs in the UNIX environment on virtually any hardware platform and version of UNIX. In the past, this was a commercial product, but has now been made public domain. Contact Michael Landy for a copy.

Features of the HIPS Image Processing Software

Written in `C'
Command-level and subroutine interface
Runs on any Unix system
Drivers are available for a variety of displays
Conveniently adapted to other displays
Easy to learn, easy to use, easy to extend
Fourier, Walsh, and dozens of other image transformations
Over 200 transformations on pixels, frames, and movies (image sequences)
Facilities for color image processing
Unrestricted image size and sequence length
Stored images are self-documenting. HIPS maintains a complete log of the file history within the header file. Every image file contains a record of who owns it, when it was created, file format as well as a record of all HIPS operations performed on it.
Operates on individual images or sequences of images (e.g., time 1, time 2, ...; red, green, blue; left, right; slice 1, slice 2, ....)
Comes with source, a complete set of on-line Unix manual pages, and detailed documentation.

HIPS programs perform:

Filtering, convolution, and edge detection
Image transform processing
Formatting and type conversion
Image compression methods
Image statistics
Image arithmetic
Image sequence manipulation
Single frame manipulation
Pixel value transformation (Point-transformation)
3D vector plotting
Noise generation
Device handling and halftoning
Image generation
Scaling and geometric transformation
Image header manipulation
Gaussian and Laplacian pyramids
Colormap manipulation
User-contributed software

HIPS is a set of image processing modules which together provide a powerful suite of tools for those interested in research, system development and teaching. Originally developed at New York University, and maintained by one of the original developers (Michael Landy), HIPS now represents one of the most extensive and flexible vision and image processing environments currently available. It runs under the UNIX operating system. It is modular and flexible, provides automatic documentation of its actions, and is almost entirely independent of special equipment. It handles sequences of images (movies) in precisely the same manner as single frames. Programs have been developed for simple image transformations, image arithmetic, filtering, convolution, Fourier and other transform processing, edge detection and line drawing manipulation, digital image compression and transmission methods, noise generation, halftoning, image statistics computation, and so on. Over 200 such image transformation programs have been developed. As a result, almost any image processing task can be performed quickly and conveniently. Additionally, HIPS allows users to easily integrate their own custom routines. New users become effective using HIPS on their first day.

HIPS features images that are self-documenting. Each image stored in the system contains a history of the transformations that have been applied to that image. HIPS includes a small set of subroutines which primarily deals with a standardized image sequence header (including subroutines and programs which allow the user to customize and extend the header resulting in a general database capability within each stored image), a large library of image processing subroutines at a variety of levels of abstraction, and a large library of image transformation tools in the form of UNIX ``filters''. It comes complete with source code, on-line manual pages, and on-line documentation. HIPS is now in use on a variety of computers including Vax and Microvax, Sun, Apollo, Masscomp, NCR Tower, Iris, IBM AT, and so on. For image display and input, drivers are supplied written by SharpImage or contributed by our users for X11, XView, SunView and a variety of other framestores and windowing packages (Sun gfx, Sun console, Datacube MaxVideo, Adage, Matrox VIP-1024, ITI IP-512, Lexidata, Macintosh II and Iris). It is a simple matter to interface HIPS with other framestores. HIPS can be easily adapted for other image display devices because 98% of HIPS is machine independent.

HIPS has proven itself a highly flexible system, both as an interactive research tool, and for more production-oriented tasks. It is both easy to use, and quickly adapted and extended to new uses. HIPS is supplied on magnetic tape in UNIX tar format (QIC-150, 8 mm, or 4 mm DAT cartridge), and comes with source code, libraries, a library of convolution masks, and on-line documentation and manual pages.

HIPS has been described in Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing (Vol. 25, 1984, pp. 331-347), and in Behavior Research Methods, Instrumentation, and Computers (Vol. 16, 1984, pp. 199-216).

HIPS is undergoing continuous extension in laboratories worldwide. When you purchase HIPS, you are, in effect, joining a club of image processing users, and are provided with updates to the system. Any HIPS purchaser may provide new HIPS modules for use by other HIPS users. At any time, members of the `club' may submit a tape and will receive an updated version with any modifications made by SharpImage or programs contributed by our users.