Bsoft offers a "raw" format to be able to load image files where the format is either not supported, or there is a problem with the header information in the file. Any input file name appended with a series of tag-value pairs as described below, invokes an attempt to read the file based on the command-line information given by the user, and to ignore any information in the file header itself. The image file name must be following by a string using the sharp character, "#", as delimiter between tag-value pairs. E.g., to interpret the file "input.file" according to particular data type and size parameters:
bimg -verbose 7 input.file#d=f#x=120,120,55#h=1024 output.map This line will interpret the file as containing a 3D image in floating point format, with the data starting at byte 1024. Typically, the minimum necessary to interpret a file is the data type, the size, and the header bytes to skip
Table 5.3. Tag-value descriptions for custom interpretation of image files
| Tag | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| h | bytes | Header size = initial number of bytes to skip |
| d | datatype_letter | Data type character (b, c, u, s, i, f, S, I, F,P) |
| x | size_x,size_y,size_z | Image size in voxels |
| p | page_x,page_y,page_z | Page size in voxels |
| a | bytes | Number of bytes to pad between pages |
| s | sampling_x,sampling_y,sampling_z | Sampling/voxel size in angstrom/voxel |
| c | number_channels | Number of channels (gray scale = 1, RGB = 3) |
| n | number_images | Number of images in the file |
| i | selected_image | Select one image to read |
| f | transform_type | n=NoTransform, s=Standard, c=Centered, h=Hermitian, q=CentHerm |
| b | 0/1 | Byte swapping flag |
| v | 0/1 | VAX floating point flag |