Finding name of single frames when reading a Tiff stack file

I have a stack tiff file 'test.tif' where each frame has a name ('frame_A', 'frame_B', etc). How can I retrieve those names when reading in the .tif file?

I tried with

    info = imfinfo('test.tif') 

but unfortunately it does not solve the issue.

[dpb]

See tiffreadVolume or maybe Tiff

[bruno stricker]

tiffreadVolume is unfortunately not available for Matlab R2017. Tiff gives me back an object but I cannot retrieve the single file name from that. Which field should they be in? Maybe some hidden Children?

[dpb]

As pointed to before, the alternative gateway to the TIFF library is what is packaged in MATLAB. There's <an example to read individual images>, what will/will not work with an older release of MATLAB you'll just have to find out by trying and seeing.

If it does work, good; if it doesn't your choices with MATLAB are probably limited unless you can find something on the File Exchange written with earlier release that has workarounds or you just dive in and develop something yourself (other than upgrading, of course).

I've never tried any so no direct hints, sorry...

[DGM]

The most direct way to get an answer is to provide an example of the file you're working with.

The forum editor won't let you attach a TIFF, but you can zip it or append a fake extension.

[bruno stricker]

Here is an example file. The names that i would like to detect, visible in ImageJ, are:

IMGP9827

IMGP9829

IMGP9830

IMGP9832

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

This is what GIMP found hidden amongst the EXIF data:

It looks like some tool has added some non-standard EXIF meta-data. Note that hidden amongst those digits are the character codes of IMGP9827, etc. No other EXIF tool I tried with that file could identify that non-standard meta-data.

Lets try with MATLAB:

unzip('test_stack.zip')
S = imfinfo('test_stack.tif')

S = 4×1 struct array with fields:
    Filename
    FileModDate
    FileSize
    Format
    FormatVersion
    Width
    Height
    BitDepth
    ColorType
    FormatSignature
    ByteOrder
    NewSubFileType
    BitsPerSample
    Compression
    PhotometricInterpretation
    StripOffsets
    SamplesPerPixel
    RowsPerStrip
    StripByteCounts
    XResolution
    YResolution
    ResolutionUnit
    Colormap
    PlanarConfiguration
    TileWidth
    TileLength
    TileOffsets
    TileByteCounts
    Orientation
    FillOrder
    GrayResponseUnit
    MaxSampleValue
    MinSampleValue
    Thresholding
    Offset
    ImageDescription
    UnknownTags

S.UnknownTags % interesting, what are these hidden amongst the EXIF meta-data?

ans = 2×1 struct array with fields:
    ID
    Offset
    Value

ans =

     []


ans =

     []


ans =

     []

S(1).UnknownTags.Value % aaahhh...

ans = 1×7

20 24 24 24 24 20 8

ans = 1×144

73 74 73 74 108 97 98 108 0 0 0 4 112 114 111 112 0 0 0 2 0 73 0 77 0 71 0 80 0 57

V = S(1).UnknownTags(2).Value % that looks promising...

V = 1×144

73 74 73 74 108 97 98 108 0 0 0 4 112 114 111 112 0 0 0 2 0 73 0 77 0 71 0 80 0 57

T = char(nonzeros(V).') % ignore null characters

T = 'IJIJlabl□prop□IMGP9827.JPGIMGP9829.JPGIMGP9830.JPGIMGP9832.JPGUniqueNametrue'

C = regexpi(T,'\w+\.JPG','match')

C = 1×4 cell array
    {'IMGP9827.JPG'}    {'IMGP9829.JPG'}    {'IMGP9830.JPG'}    {'IMGP9832.JPG'}

[bruno stricker]

wow, thanks so much! It works like a charm!

[Walter Roberson]

I came to the same conclusion as @Stephen23 .

I was trying to figure out what the rule was for representing the file names when I got called away for the rest of the evening.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

Individual TIFF frames do not have "names". If you were to read in a bunch of image files and combine them into a TIFF file, then the file names would not typically be stored.

The program that created the TIFF file might potentially have stored the names as Image Description https://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/tifftags/imagedescription.html or as Page Name https://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/tifftags/pagename.html or Copyright https://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/tifftags/copyright.html . Or as 9c9b XPTitle (Windows) or 9c9c XPComment (Windows) or 9c9f XPSubject (Windows)

At first File Source https://www.awaresystems.be/imaging/tiff/tifftags/privateifd/exif/filesource.html seems plausible from the name, but it is a numeric tag with value 3 to indicate DSC (Digital Still Camera)