The following support page applies to i2k Align version 1.3. Version 2.0 will be more powerful, but just as easy to use!
i2k Align is part of the family of image alignment and montaging software tools, the most
sophisticated tools of their kind to be found anywhere.
This page provides an overview of the user interface, one of three ways to interact with the i2k Suite of Products.
The second and third methods are a command-line executable LINK and a C-level programming interface LINK.
The remainder of this page focuses exclusively on the user interface.
Trial Mode
After installation, the software starts in trial mode, which allows users to test all of the i2k Align™ functions, but the images it produces have subtle watermarks. Trial mode lasts for up to 14 days and 75 runs of the core align / montage functionality. At any time, the user can purchase an activation code and use it to activate the full functionality of the software, eliminating the watermarks.
Purchase and Activation
In order to purchase i2k Align™ users must purchase a 16-bit activation code from the website. Here are the steps you need to take:
1. Click on Order Now from the i2k Align™ dialog or go directly to the website.
2. Place an Order.
3. You will receive the 16-bit code via email. Note that the email with the code may take up to 15 minutes after your purchase to arrive in your Inbox.
4. You may activate i2k Align™ by typing in the 16-digit activation code you received. You can do this when you start or restart the software from the i2k Align™ Trial dialog, or by clicking Trial-> Standard Activation from the main menu.
If have trouble activating, and make several unsuccessful attempts, you may run our manual activation process instead by clicking Trial-> Manual Activation or by switching to manual activation from the Activation dialog. This process should only be required for customers with atypical internet connections.
The Two Tools of i2k Align™
Fundamentally, i2k Align™ has two tools, each taking N images as input and producing one or more image files as output. These output images are shown to the user in a preview window. Here are the two tools:
1. The montage tool builds a montage of the input images, blending them to create a single, composite image, with motion artifacts removed, seams eliminated, and illumination differences corrected.
2. The align tool registers the input images, mapping them into a common coordinate frame so that each pixel of each image correspondences to the same physical point. This allows users to combine images from different modalities, to visualize blood flow in angiograms, and to see how the same scene looks at different times on a pixel-by-pixel basis.
After the montage or the align tool completes, the resulting images are saved to output files, which then may be previewed in several ways. For montages, the preview window allows the user to zoom in and scroll around the montage. For aligned images, the preview plays the images in a sequence loop, with controls on the speed of playback, and controls providing the ability to pause and step forward and backward through the images.
i2Align™: The Underlying Engine
i2k Align™ works with a wide variety of image types, ranging from thermal to photographic. The software itself requires the user to choose between Photographic images and Other Modalities. The "Other Modalities" label is a catch-all, which means simply that the same processing is applied to each set of images that is labeled this way.
i2k Align™ handles most common input image formats, including JPEG, PNG, PNM, BPM and TIF, handling 16-bit versions of PNG and TIF. This list will be extended in the future, in part based on customer demand.
The i2k Align™ User Interface
Everything about the user interface is built around input to, control of, and output from the Align and Montage tools. Across the across the top of the display (below the menus), the user may select the image type and has a number of ways of selecting images to be shown in the central thumbnail area. [ Insert screen shot with the top area selected in an ellipse. ] The image selected after clicking the Add Images button are added to the central thumbnail area, allowing images from different folders to be shown at the same time. The folder name show is the folder from which the most recently added images were taken. Finally the Clear All button removes all images from the thumbnail display.
Turning next to the buttons across the bottom of the tool display, the center buttons control the selection of the thumbnails and the size of the thumbnails. Of course, clicking on the thumbnails themselves is the primary means of selecting a thumbnail. (Note that right-clicking on a thumbnail gives some detail on the image.) Once two or more thumbnails are selected, the user can click on the Generate Montage button or the Align Images button to launch the main montaging and alignment computations, which are applied to the selected thumbnails.
