>> I wonder if that might be handled as a scikits-image extension, rather
>> than core numpy?
>
> I think Stefan and Nathaniel and Gary Strangman and others are saying
> we don't want to pay the price of a large memory hike for masking.   I
> suspect that Nathaniel is right, and that a large majority of those of
> us who want 'missing data' functionality, also want what we've called
> ABSENT missing values, and care about memory.

FWIW, Matthew correctly interprets my concerns. I also have very large
non-image datasets, so pushing the problem into a more custom extension
(esp. one focused on images) doesn't help me much.

-best
Gary