How to implement pan/zoom on gigapixel bitmaps?

Question

In my project, I\'m using (uncompressed 16-bit grayscale) gigapixel images which come from a high resolution scanner for measurement purposes. Since these bitmaps can not be loa

Answer 1

I guess you can address this issue following the steps below:

1. Image generation:

   • segment your image in multiple subimages (tiles) of a small resolution, for instace, 500x500. These images are depth 0
   • combine a series of tiles with depth 0 (4x4 or 6x6), resize the combination generating a new tile with 500x500 pixels in depth 1.
   • continue with this approach until get the entire image using only a few tiles.

2. Image visualization

   • Start from the highest depth
   • When user drags the image, load the tiles dynamically
   • When the user zoom a region of the image, decrease the depth, loading the tiles for that region in a higher resolution.

The final result is similar to Google Maps.