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NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis

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For the past 25 years NIH Image and ImageJ software have been pioneers as open tools for the analysis of scientific images. We discuss the origins, challenges and solutions of these two programs, and how their history can serve to advise and inform other software projects.

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Figure 1: Appearance of NIH Image and ImageJ.
Figure 2: ImageJ plug-ins bundled with each ImageJ release over time.

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Acknowledgements

We thank members of our research groups and software projects for helpful feedback on the manuscript, in particular C. Rueden, J. Fong and J. Schindelin for input on the manuscript and help with the figures. This work was supported in part by NIH grant RC2 GM092519 (to K.W.E.), but the opinions expressed are solely those of the authors.

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Correspondence to Kevin W Eliceiri.

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Schneider, C., Rasband, W. & Eliceiri, K. NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis. Nat Methods 9, 671–675 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2089

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