View IMS files in your browser
The file Imaris works in, light-sheet and confocal volumes kept with smaller copies of themselves. Open one right here, each channel in its color. Nothing leaves your device.
Or drop it anywhere on this page
What you'll see
Your image opens with each channel in its own color, mixed as the microscope's software shows them, with Z, time and scenes on sliders.
- Channels • Each in its color with its own levels
- Z, time and scenes • A slider each
- Measure • Lengths in µm, with a scale bar
- Export • Save the view as PNG or the plane as OME-TIFF
About IMS
Imaris turns microscope stacks into volumes to look through, and its IMS file is where they live: light-sheet scans of whole cleared organs, confocal stacks converted by Imaris File Converter, and Andor's Dragonfly spinning disks, which save IMS themselves.
An IMS file is HDF5 laid out the Imaris way: each time point and channel a dataset at every resolution level, each level half the one before, so a volume of hundreds of GB can be looked at without reading it all. Beside them it keeps each channel's name, color and wavelengths, and the volume's extent in µm.
Filepeek reads it in your browser through HDF5 in WebAssembly, each part from the resolution level the zoom wants. Channels are mixed in their colors on your graphics card with their own levels, Z and time go on sliders, Measure gives lengths in µm, and Export saves the view as PNG or the plane as OME-TIFF.
Imaris
.ims
Format
- MIME type
- application/octet-stream
- Made by
- Bitplane, now part of Oxford Instruments, for Imaris
Inside the file
- Built on
- HDF5
- Pixels
- 8, 16 or 32 bit
- Holds
- Channels, Z, time and resolution levels
- Metadata
- Names, colors, wavelengths and extent
Opens in every browser
Filepeek opens IMS in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. No browser shows it by itself.
- YouChromeOpens through Filepeek
- YouEdgeOpens through Filepeek
- YouFirefoxOpens through Filepeek
- YouSafariOpens through Filepeek
Apps that open IMS
- WindowsImaris Viewer, free • Fiji with Bio-Formats, free
- MacImaris Viewer, free • Fiji with Bio-Formats, free
- iPhone and iPadNo app built in opens it
- AndroidNo app built in opens it
Questions
How do I open an IMS file?
Drop it on this page or press Peek an IMS. It opens with each channel in its color, read from the smaller levels the file keeps, so even a big light-sheet volume shows at once.
Does it show the volume in 3D?
It shows the volume plane by plane: drag the Z slider or press the up and down keys to go through it. Imaris's own 3D view, with its surfaces and spots, needs Imaris or the free Imaris Viewer.
Why do the colors differ from Imaris?
Filepeek uses each channel's color as the file keeps it, with its levels set from the channel's own values. Imaris may keep display settings of its own, which Auto in Channels doesn't follow.
Are Imaris's spots and surfaces shown?
No. The objects Imaris makes from a volume, like spots, surfaces and tracks, aren't drawn. The channels, Z, time and their metadata are.
Which IMS files don't open?
Files from Imaris 5.0 and older, which aren't HDF5, don't. Imaris opens them and saves them again as an IMS that opens here.