Interactive Display of High-resolution Images on the World-Wide Web

Viewing high-resolution images on the World Wide Web at a level of detail necessary for collaborative research is still a problem today, given the Internet's current bandwidth limitations and its ever increasing network traffic. ImageEyes is an interactive display tool being developed at Utah State University that addresses this problem by integrating caching, compression, and transmission techniques and performing global optimization across these techniques. It is an interactive image display facility that allows Web users to explore high-resolution images in near real-time without upgrading their computers or networks. Although much of ImageEyes is based on existing technology, it employs several innovations, including a three-dimensional, hierarchical cache and a data striping technique that tolerates lossy transmission without significant degradation to the user's view. This paper describes: the ImageEyes architecture, including Web components and protocols, client software, user interface, client's cache, and server's image processor; an operational overview; performance evaluation; and related work. A figure presents a high-level view of ImageEyes' architecture. (Author/AEF) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ********************************************************************************