Deep Zoom is a technology developed by Microsoft for efficiently transmitting and viewing images. It allows users to pan around and zoom in a large, high resolution image or a large collection of images. It reduces the time required for initial load by downloading only the region being viewed or only at the resolution it is displayed at. Subsequent regions are downloaded as the user pans to (or zooms into) them; animations are used to hide any jerkiness in the transition. The libraries are also available in other platforms including Java and Flash.

History

The Deep Zoom file format is very similar to the

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

image format where images are broken into tiles and then displayed as required. The tiling typically follows a quadtree pattern of increasing resolution of image (in other words twice the zoom and twice the resolution). The main difference is that with Google Maps the actual details on the image change from one zoom level to another, while with Deep Zoom the same image is displayed at each zoom level.

Seadragon Software Seadragon Software was a team within the Microsoft Live Labs. Its product, Seadragon, is a web optimized visualization technology that allows graphics and photos to be smoothly browsed, regardless of their size. Seadragon is the technology powerin ...

, formerly Sand Codex, first created the Seadragon technology and its implementation of what is now called Deep Zoom. This technology was then absorbed into the

Microsoft Live Labs Microsoft Live Labs was a partnership between MSN and Microsoft Research that focused on applied research for Internet products and services at Microsoft. Live Labs was headed by Dr. Gary William Flake, who prior to joining Microsoft was a princi ...

when Seadragon Software was acquired. Engineers from Seadragon now work with Microsoft to integrate their work into technology such as

Silverlight Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich web applications, similar to Adobe Inc., Adobe's Run time environment, runtime, Adobe Flash. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for a v ...

and

Photosynth Photosynth is a discontinued app and service from Microsoft Live Labs and the University of Washington that analyzes digital photographs and generates a three-dimensional model of the photos and a point cloud of a photographed object. Pattern r ...

Deep Zoom examples

The most famous implementation of Deep Zoom was probably the first: the memorabilia collection at th
Hard Rock website
Conceived and designed by Duncan/Channon and built by Vertigo, it was demonstrated for the first time in March 2008 at the

Microsoft MIX MIX was a Microsoft conference held annually for Web developers and designers at which Microsoft showcased upcoming web technologies. The conference was held each spring at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Unlike many of Microsoft's technical co ...

convention in

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

. In 2010,

partnered with the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

to create

ChronoZoom ChronoZoom is a free open source project that visualizes time on the broadest possible scale from the Big Bang to the present day. Conceived by Walter Alvarez and Roland Saekow and developed by the department of Earth and Planetary Science at t ...

, a DeepZoom-powered time visualization tool that pushed the limits of DeepZoom, since it required zooming from the scale of 13 billion years down to a single day. The project has since graduated to development under Microsoft Research. Another example is th
Deep Earth
project. It is described b
its creators
as "a community project focused on creating a rich interactive mapping control using Silverlight2 Deep Zoom. Concentrating on Microsoft Virtual Earth imagery and data the project offers team members the opportunity to learn and share while creating something cool and useful." A paintings collection project http://galleryzoom.co.uk/ shows 1000 high resolution/sensor images individually indexed. (Using Deep Zoom Composer). Blaise Aguera y Arcas gave a demonstration of Seadragon and

at the 2007 TED conference. In November 2009,

352 Media Group 35 or XXXV may refer to: * 35 (number), the natural number following 34 and preceding 36 * one of the years 35 BC, AD 35, 1935, 2035 * ''XXXV'' (album), a 2002 album by Fairport Convention * '' 35xxxv'', a 2015 album by One Ok Rock * "35" (s ...

, a Silverlight developer in the Microsoft Silverlight Partner Program, created an example of Deep Zoom using Microsoft Silverlight version 3. It is online a
352 Media Group's Web site
Th
Winston Churchill Deep Zoom
mosaic, created by Silverlight developer
Shoothill
features as both an online interactive deep zoom and a standalone deep zoom which forms part of the Churchill exhibit in the

Churchill War Rooms The Churchill War Rooms is a museum in London and one of the five branches of the Imperial War Museum. The museum comprises the ''Cabinet War Rooms'', a historic underground complex that housed a British government command centre throughout the ...

in Whitehall. In 2010, Shoothill built th
Sumatran Tiger Deep Zoom
- the largest seen to date - for worldwide conservation charit
Fauna and Flora International
featuring thousands of images of endangered species. An early example of Deep Zoom-like technology was implemented at The Department of Maori Affairs in New Zealand in 1997. The technology was used to display Maori land ownership.

Deep Zoom images

The file format used by Deep Zoom (as well as

and Seadragon Ajax) is XML based. Users can specify a single large image (dzi) or a collection of images (dzc). It also allows for "Sparse Images"; where some parts of the image have greater resolution than others, an example of which can be found on th
Seadragon Ajax home page
The bike image displayed is a sparse image. Though used in the proprietary Deep Zoom, the dzi format is open and able to be used by anyone.

Deep Zoom image (dzi)

A DZI has two parts: a DZI file (with either a .dzi or .xml extension) and a subdirectory of image folders. Each folder in the image subdirectory is labeled with its level of resolution. Higher numbers correspond to a higher resolution level; inside each folder are the image tiles corresponding to that level of resolution, numbered consecutively in columns from top left to bottom right.

Deep Zoom collection (dzc)

A DZC is a collection of some number of DZIs linked and referenced by a DZC file (with either a .dzc or .xml extension). At a high level, a collection is a number of image thumbnails whose location is kept track of by the .dzc/.xml file, when zooming into an image, it accesses greater resolutions tiles. A DZC's structure is similar to that of a DZI; the .dzc/.xml file defines the collection and the subdirectory of folders maps to the DZI file structure, each with their set of .dzi/.xml and image tiles. The DZC is used in Microsoft's Pivot, but not in SeaDragon per se.

Sparse Images

Sparse images are a sub-classification of the DZI file type. A sparse image is normally a number of separate photographs with varying resolution levels that have been placed in a single DZI instead of a DZC. Sparse images have no different file structure than that of a DZI and differ only in that there is not a single "highest resolution" level for the entire DZI.

iPhone OS development

Microsoft Live Labs has created an application for the

App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the c ...

called Seadragon Mobile.https://www.engadget.com/2008/12/14/microsoft-releases-first-iphone-application-seadragon/ Microsoft releases first iPhone/iPod application, Seadragon It is run over the internet and includes Deep Zoom on the following categories; art, history, maps, photos,

which anybody can upload to, space and technology & web.

References

External links

The Official Microsoft Silverlight SiteA DeepZoom PrimerMSDN Overview in Silverlight for DevelopersDownload Deep Zoom ComposerDynamically generated DeepZoom image of Mandelbrot Fractal, Google AppEngine SDK Demo (Java), Webpage using Microsoft SeaDragon AJAX for DeepZoom displayDynamically generated DeepZoom image of Mandelbrot Fractal, Google AppEngine SDK Demo (Java), ClipFlair Studio Image component (Silverlight) used for displayOpenSeadragon
uses Deep Zoom technology.
Zoomo
- image sharing website, uses OpenSeadragon for its image display.
Zoomable
- conversion tool, API available {{Microsoft Research Labs, state=uncollapsed Microsoft Live Labs Graphics software IOS software