Frequently Asked Questions
What is Cloudpak?
A: Cloudpak is a subscription-based storage, analysis, collaboration and viewing service for large (>100MB) image data. Cloudpak allows many users to access these images at the same time.
What is MIST?
A: Massive Image Solution Technology: MIST is a cloud-based, object oriented storage system that provides efficient compression, visualization, and collaboration functions.
Why can’t I just store the data myself?
A: You could store your images locally or remotely and then email or FTP those images to colleagues. However, they would need the same viewing and collaboration software in order to work with your images. Also, you and your colleagues would incur multiple communications and compute charges each time you loaded and unloaded the images. Since the image data could reside on multiple servers, there is no way to “publish” your work to broader audiences or the general population.
Do I need IT support?
A: No, there are no special firewall settings or client software required for viewing data.
Can my IT organization interface our proprietary software to Cloudpak?
A: Yes. The Cloudpak SDK provides a description of our secure application programming interface (API) and provides documentation on how any development organization can interface their own software to our upload, storage and analysis services.
How do I access Cloudpak?
A: All you need is a browser (Firefox, Safari, IE) on a supported platform (Linux, Windows, Mac, “Smart Phone”, iPad, etc.).
How do I load my images into Cloudpak?
A: You can load your images via browser, or our MISTLoader™ software running on your desktop computer. The advanced compression technology used by MISTLoader will reduce your upload time up by 90% over a raw image upload with any other software. If you have a large collection of image data you wish to host it may be more efficient to upload your image data by shipping media to Cloudpak.
Can I share my work?
A: Yes, Cloudpak provides access control to your images for your colleagues. You control which users see your images
or you can publish images to the world.
How much does Cloudpak cost?
A: Cloudpak offers a free trail account (2GB). Cloudpak services start at $29/mo for up to 50GB of image data. For very large image repositories, our unlimited corporate account means you only pay for what you use.
Am I charged for storage I don't use?
A: Not with the unlimited corporate account. You pay for a basic subscription class of service and then for increments over your usage; much like your cell phone.
Are my images secure?
A: Yes, they are stored on a physically secured server using HMAC-SHA1 and multi-factor authentication.
What type of processing (analysis) can I perform on my images?
A: Users can analyze image data visually and annotate their observations with the image data. Technically adept customers can access their image data through our API for custom image processing.
What are the different quality levels of compression with Cloudpak?
A: Cloudpak compresses image data to any one of three different levels; Highest, High, and Standard. Highest quality compression is lossless compression, meaning that absolutely no image data is altered by the compression. High quality Cloudpak compression is roughly twice as good as high quality (85) JPEG compression. This is because Cloudpak uses the state of the art JPEG2000 compression codecs instead of the older JPEG codecs. Customers will find that High quality compression is visually undetectable and has a compression ratio of 10:1. Standard Cloudpak compression will have some small compression artifacts that can be seen at 100%, but the compression ratio is around 15:1.
What is the difference between your compression technology and native data?
A: Cloudpak uses an object-oriented version of JPEG2000, the most advanced image compression standard in the world. Cloudpak has extended this compression technology to support virtually any type of image data: 2D, 3D, 4D, multispectral, and higher precision (> 8 bit per color channel bit depth).
Is a JPEG2000 better than just a JPEG?
A: JEPG2000 compresses image data greater with fewer artifacts than any other compression algorithm in existence. JPEG2000 also allows for both lossless and lossy image data compression. Unlike JPEG, JPEG2000 is also designed to handle extremely large images and images with more than 8 bits per color channel.
I have images that use Zoomify, DeepZoom, OpenZoom, etc. How do I get my images to Cloudpak?
A: If you have the original images you can load them via MISTLoader or by sending Cloudpak the media containing the images. If your images have been “rendered” by another tool, in the near future, Cloudpak may be able to reconstruct much of the original content.
I use a CMS (SharePoint, Confluence, etc.) for collaboration, can I still use Cloudpak?
A: Yes, Cloudpak images can be linked to document content systems through their unique and unchanging image identifiers.
Can I embed your viewer onto my internal website?
A: Yes. The Cloudpak viewer can be embedded in your website directly. Image data can be shared with all Cloudpak users or anyone in the world through the internet.
Can I create my own viewer?
A: Yes, by using the Cloudpak SDK, you can interface your viewing software to the Cloudpak storage and analysis services.
How many formats do you support?
A: Cloudpak currently handles many different image formats. Cloudpak accomplishes this by using the OME Bio Formats. See their list of currently supported image formats for more detail. Cloudpak continually tests and verifies new file formats. We will expand this list to satisfy our customers requests.
Is there any size limitation to my image collection?
A: The size of your collection is unlimited. If you wish to store a petabyte or more of image data for visualization, sharing and collaboration then Cloudpak can handle it.
Can Cloudpak handle 3D images captured over time, otherwise known as 3D/4D?
A: Yes. Cloudpak has no limitation with the number of slices or frames.
What is a 5-D image?
A: A 5-D image is one that represents 3 and 4-D data in multi-spectral representation. In other words, each 2-D color plane for each channel is captured for each volume (3-D) and time frame (4-D) slice separately.
Can Cloudpak handle image bit depths greater than 8 bits?
A: Yes. Cloudpak can accept images with bit depths of up to 16 bits per pixel per color. For visualization, users can select a portion of the intensity range to display instead of compressing all the available precision into an 8 bit color channel.
Can Cloudpak handle more than three colors?
A: Yes. Cloudpak can accept images with any number of color channels. The Cloudpak viewer allows mapping arbitrary color channels to output RGB.
Is there a limit the size of an image stored in Cloudpak?
A: No. Cloudpak has no arbitrary limit on image size. Cloudpak has been used to store 100GB images with no problem.