Workbench for Imaging Spectroscopy Exploration and Research (WISER)

WISER software for analysis of imaging spectroscopy data was developed by the Ehlmann Research Group in collaboration with the Caltech Schmidt Academy for Software Engineering.

Interested in contributing to this software as a developer? Please contact us at wiser_AT_caltech.edu.

Download

Are you a non-commercial user interested in downloading WISER? Please fill out the request form.

Software

Imaging spectroscopy datasets contain spectral information, sometimes at hundreds of wavelengths or more, for each spatial pixel. These spectra provide compositional information at every pixel. Commercial software for analysis of imaging spectroscopy datasets requires expensive licenses, and there is a community need for free software that can be modified and expanded to meet the requirements of today's cutting-edge research.

WISER is built in Python and is designed to be modular and extensible. We encourage users to build plug-ins that enhance the functionality for the broader imaging spectroscopy community. Some of the current capabilities include the following:

Display context, main, and zoomed views of spectral image cubes
Spatial and spectral subsetting of image cubes
Linking of spectral image cubes
Interactive spectral plot window and export of spectra
Support for spectral libraries and import/export of text files with spectra
Interactive contrast stretching of image display
Drawing, importing, and exporting regions of interest and computing mean of regions
Toolkit to perform mathematical calculations on image cubes, single spectral bands, and individual spectra
Read in TIFF, GEOTIFF, and .tfw files
Display of and go to geographic and projected coordinates
Python plugin API to support user-developed analysis tools on raster data, spectra, regions of interest, etc.

For more information on WISER, please see the manual, a Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference (LPSC) abstract, and a poster from the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting.

Planned Software Enhancements

Starting in January 2025, WISER will be supported by a NASA Planetary Data Archiving, Restoration, and Tools (PDART) grant. As part of the PDART grant, WISER will be released open source in the next couple years. We have a number of features that we are building to incorporate into future versions of WISER. These include the following:

Improved efficiency with large datasets, including the math toolkit
Image cube mosaicking
Linux installer
Batch processing
Image processing plugins

Datasets

WISER currently supports .img/.hdr and TIFF/GEOTIFF/.tfw image formats. We are currently expanding WISER to allow other image formats.

The following are some example sources of data that can be analyzed in WISER:

Sample AVIRIS image of Caltech: Image and header
AVIRIS data
Planetary Data Systems (PDS) Geosciences Node
Laboratory and field imaging spectroscopy datasets generated by the Ehlmann Lab at Caltech: Dataset page

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Licensing

WISER is currently freely available for non-commercial use, including for students, researchers, educational institutions, non-profits, and government use. We are exploring licensing options. Other uses, particularly commercial uses, require making arrangements with the Caltech Technology Transfer and Corporate Partnerships office (https://innovation.caltech.edu). For other uses, please contact wiser_AT_caltech.edu to make arrangements.

Contact

For any questions, please contact us at wiser_AT_caltech.edu.

People

Leadership: Bethany Ehlmann, Rebecca Greenberger, David Thompson
Software developers: Joshua Garcia-Kimble (current), Donnie Pinkston
Undergraduate interns (plugin development): Sahil Azad, Amy Wang
Graduate students (science advice): Samantha Baker, Abigail Keebler, Brandon Rassmussen, Eva Scheller

Funding

WISER was developed with funding from Caltech's Schmidt Academy for Software Engineering. We are grateful for funding from a NASA Planetary Data Archiving, Restoration, and Tools (PDART) grant to begin in 2025.

Disclaimer

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Neither the name of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.