IDL (Interactive Data Language) is a popular data visualization and analysis platform used for interactive processing of large amounts of data including images.

IDL possesses the ability to interact with Java applications via its IDL-Java bridge. Karsten Rodenacker has written a script that uses Bio-Formats to read in image files to IDL.

Download the ij_read_bio_formats.pro script from Karsten Rodenacker's IDL goodies (?) web site. You will also need to download Bio-Formats, placing either bio-formats.jar or loci_tools.jar in the classpath. See the comments at the top of the script for further instructions.

To use a newer version of Bio-Formats, overwrite bio-formats.jar or loci_tools.jar with the newer version and restart IDL.