Data formats for
Imaging Science

Imaging scientists acquire and store their data in a number of formats. Some of these are proprietary, some are not. ImagingTools encourages the storage of data in the primary format of acquisition (i.e. the format in which it was created). When these data are in a format that is proprietary, ImagingTools further encourages scientists to approach FAIR storage of these data by also including open format copies of their data in their repositories.

Proprietary data formats, or closed data formats, are those produced by software that is commercial (= not free). The design of these file types is protected and secret. Proprietary data formats can sometimes have usage restrictions and may only be able to be opened by licensed software. Because of these limitations, data stored in these formats may not always be able to be opened and used by all researchers. These restrictions can limit the shareability and FAIRness of these data.

Open data formats, also known as free file formats, are able to be opened by freely available software packages, such as open-source software and freeware. When proprietary data format files are converted into open data format files, some of the richness of the file may be lost, but the underlying data remain the same.

To illustrate the difference between proprietary data format files and open data format files, please consider the following scenario:

A formatted file in MSWord (*.doc) is saved as a text file (*.txt). When you open the text file in another package, such as a text editor, the mark-up of the text with bold and sub-headings is no longer included in the document.

In this example, the text remains the same, but some of the richness of the document format has been lost. Nonetheless, the document can now be opened and worked on by people who do not have access to the original software package, and the loss of the formatting will not materially alter the understanding of the document. The key objective here was to make the document shareable, in alignment with FAIR principles, and that can be achieved through saving the document in two formats, proprietary and open.