Multi-format Video Frame Grabber ImageJ Plugin - MVFG Isabel Laranjo * , Joel Braga and Victor Alves University of Minho, School of Engineering, Informatics Department, 4710-057, Braga, Portugal ABSTRACT Currently ImageJ presents itself as a good working tool for medical imaging research. Image processing and analysis using specific ImageJ plugins is a simple process, mainly due to its natively support for a wide range of image formats. However, there are medical imaging modalities (e.g. endoscopy, ultrasound), with video output formats that are still not supported by ImageJ (e.g. VOB, MPG). With the base package of ImageJ it is possible to open videos in AVI format 1 and with additional plugins (e.g., QuickTime Movie Writer 2 , JMF Movie Reader 3 , QuickTime Opener 4 ) videos in Quicktime Movie format (i.e. MOV and PIC) are also supported. For other video formats it is necessary to convert the video to a supported format using a third party video converter application. A video is basically a temporal sequence of images. An average endoscopy produces a five to ten minute video with a frame rate of 50 fps. Of these tens of thousands of images only a few are relevant, thus it is necessary to select and extract the relevant images to be analyzed / processed in ImageJ. In this paper, we present an ImageJ plugin developed to select and extract frames from video in diverse formats (e.g. MOV, AVI, VOB, MPG, MP4, FLV, MKV). Its user interface allows for video viewing and browsing. During video visualization the user can grab frames and export them as images or an Image Stack to ImageJ. This plugin, entitled “Multi-format Video Frame Grabber - MVFG” was developed using the vlcj framework (a Java framework for the vlc media player) 5 . Keywords: ImageJ Plugin, Frame Grabbing, Multi Format Video 1. INTRODUCTION ImageJ is a free and powerful software tool for image processing and analysis. With this software you can open, edit, analyze, process, save and print 8-bit RGB and grayscale, 16-bit integer and 32-bit floating-point images. This tool works with many image formats (e.g. BMP, DICOM, GIF, JPEG, TIFF), however when dealing with video, it becomes limited in terms of supported formats 1 . In the medical imaging field there are modalities/techniques with image output (e.g. Computed Tomography - CT, Magnetic Resonance Imaging - MRI) and others with video output (e.g. ultrasound, endoscopy). With the base package of ImageJ it is possible to open videos in AVI format 1 . It is also possible to work with videos in Quicktime Movie format (i.e. MOV and PIC) installing additional plugins (e.g., QuickTime Movie Writer 2 , JMF Movie Reader 3 , QuickTime Opener 4 ). For any other video formats it is necessary to convert the video to a supported format using a third party video converter application (e.g. Format Factory for Windows 6 , Any Video Converter for Windows 7 or Mac OS X 8 , ). The number of frames that a particular device or optical electronic processes displays per time unit is called Frame Rate. This value is expressed in frames per second (fps) and the main systems deal with frame rates between 30 and 50fps. An average endoscopy video of 10 minutes with 50fps has about 30000 frames. It is not practical to work with a stack of so many images using ImageJ. The plugin we propose tackles these two problems, working with most of the common used video formats and providing an user interface for frame grabbing. * Further author information: (Send correspondence to I.L.) I.L.: E-mail: isabel.laranjo88@gmail.com, Telephone: J.B.: E-mail: joeltelesbraga@gmail.com, Telephone: V.A.: E-mail: valves@di.uminho.pt, Telephone: