Basic Image Interchange Format (BIIF)

by Steve Carson, GSC Associates Inc., carson@siggraph.org

This article describes the Basic Image Interchange Format (BIIF), which is based on the National Imagery Transmission Format Standard (NITFS) developed by the US DoD and adopted by NATO. The BIIF is the basis for a new standards activity within ISO/IEC JTC1/SC24 (Computer Graphics and Image Processing) to add a new Part 5 to the International Standard for Image Processing and Interchange (IPI) (ISO 12087) that is based on BIIF.

Imagery applications use multiple types of systems for the exchange, storage, and processing of images, and associated imagery data. The format used in one application is likely to be incompatible with formats used in other applications. Since each application may use a unique, internal data representation, a common format for interchange of information across applications is needed for interoperability of systems within and across applications. The Basic Image Interchange Format (BIIF) specification provides such a common basis for storage and interchange of images and associated data among existing and future applications. The BIIF supports interoperability by providing a data format for shared imagery and an interchange format for images and associated imagery data.

The Basic Image Interchange Format (BIIF) will be Part 5 of the International Standard for Image Processing and Interchange (IPI) (ISO 12087.) establishes the specification of the part of the standard. The standard provides a foundation for interoperability in the interchange of imagery and imagery-related data among applications. It provides a detailed description of the overall structure of the format, as well as specification of the valid data content and format for all fields defined within a BIIF file. The BIIF provides a data format container for raster, symbol, and text data, along with a mechanism for including image-related support data.

The BIIF satisfies the following requirements:

  1. Allow diverse applications to share imagery and associated data.
  2. Allows an application to exchange comprehensive information to users with diverse needs or capabilities, allowing each user to select only those data items that correspond to their needs and capabilities.
  3. Minimizes preprocessing and post processing of data.
  4. Minimizes formatting overhead, particularly for those applications exchanging only a small amount of data and for bandwidth-limited systems.
  5. Provides a mechanism to interchange PIKS (Programmer's Imaging Kernel, Part 2 of ISO 12087) image and image-related objects
  6. Provides extensibility to accommodate future data, including objects. As BIIF becomes more capable through extension and the addition of new data, objects and data relationships, concepts and features of 12087-3 (IIF - Image Interchange Format) may be considered as a more appropriate method of growth. This is to facilitate a growth path from BIIF to IIF.
In the BIIF, data interchange between disparate systems is potentially enabled by a translation process. Using BIIF, each system must be compliant with only one external format that will be used for communication with all other participating systems. When BIIF is not used as a system's native internal format, each system will translate between the system's internal representation for imagery and the BIIF format. A system from which data is to be transferred has a translation module that accepts information structured according to the system's internal representation for images and related imagery data, and assembles this information into the BIIF format. The receiving system will reformat the BIIF data, converting it into one or more files structured as required by the internal representation of the receiving system. Each receiving system can translate selectively and permanently store only those portions of data in the received BIIF that are of interest. A system may transmit all of its data, even though some of the receiving systems may be unable to process certain elements of the data.

BIIF Status

At its July 1996 meeting in Kyoto, Japan, JTC1/SC24 agreed to publish BIIF as Committee Draft (CD) 12087-5. The CD ballot will commence in the fourth quarter of 1996. After comment resolution, BIIF is expected to reach DIS status in 1997.

The BIIF CD text is not yet available publicly via the Internet, but it is expected to be available soon. In the mean time, for further information concerning BIIF, you may start with the available information concerning NITFS, the specification on which BIIF is based. You may consult either of these two sites: http://jitc-emh.army.mil/nitf/nitf.htm or http://www.cio.dma.gov/nitfs.

For further information about the work of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC24 (Computer Graphics and Image Processing) you may consult the committee's home page at http://www.cwi.nl/JTC1SC24/.

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