Advice for imaging

[Tom Harris]

Hi,

I have to do some quick prototyping on some image processing algorithms. The
requirements are to read in a large 16 bit per pixel image, do stuff to it
in various ways, and then compute various metrics on the result. The purpose
of this is to optimise an algorithm. I have libraries  for accessing and
loading/saving the images already written in C++.

Last time I had to do this I wrote simple command line wrappers in C to call
my libraries and write out images in a simple format (in fact it was
Poskanser bitmap, which is the simplest image format ever). Then wrote more
command line tools in C to try out the algorithms, and scripted the whole
mess with Perl and bash.

Now, however, I have learnt Python and there has got to be a better way
(especially as I can no longer understand what my Perl code did, or why or
how). I can see that using SWIG to wrap my libraries so that I can call them
from Python will be easy, but I am not sure quite what is the Pythonic way
of accessing an image (my lib represents an image as a pointer to the start
of a buffer together with methods to determine width, height, padding, etc. 
I looked at the Python Imaging Library but unfortunately it does not appear
to support 16 bit pixel images. 
Since speed is not really an issue, I was thinking in terms of a simple
class that is attached to an image that is able to iterate over it in
various ways, and get/set pixel values.

Advice?

 Tom Harris, Software Engineer
 Optiscan Imaging, 15-17 Normanby Rd, Notting Hill, Melbourne, Vic 3168,
Australia
 email tomh at optiscan.com     ph +61 3 9538 3333  fax +61 3 9562 7742

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