Method of processing a viewport within large format imagery

1. A method of processing a viewport within an image arranged as a matrix of tiles from a container file, the method being implemented by a computer system that includes one or more processors configured to execute processing operations, the method comprising:

reading, by the one or more processors, data of the viewport starting from a point of origin of the viewport, the viewport having a pixel width and a pixel height, the viewport being a portion of an image stored in a record within the file container;

reading, by the one or more processors, record metadata of the record;

computing, by the one or more processors, column numbers or row numbers, or both, of the tiles containing the viewport; and

launching, by the one or more processors, parallel or asynchronous read requests for each row or each column of the viewport.

2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein reading record metadata includes reading a record metadata section at absolute container file offset O rm =S fcm +(S r ×N), where S fcm corresponds to a size of the record metadata section and S r corresponds to a size of the record, and N is a record number.

3. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising determining, by the one or more processors, if the record contains an image uncompressed, tiled arranged in a column major order, or an image compressed, tiled and arranged in column major order, or an image compressed, tiled and arranged in a row-major order, or in a third party file format.

4. The method according to claim 3 , wherein if the record contains an image uncompressed, tiled arranged in a column major order,

computing top left and bottom right column numbers of the tiles containing the viewport,

for each column, computing an absolute aligned offset from a start of the container file, and an aligned size of a strip starting from line Y 0 to and including line Y 0 +V h −1, and

collecting and processing only pixels that reside within the viewport bounds to generate the output viewport in a single raster.

5. The method according to claim 3 , wherein if the record contains an image compressed, tiled, with the tiles arranged in row-major order,

computing top left and bottom right column and row numbers of the tiles containing the viewport,

for each row, launching parallel or asynchronous operations to read tiles for each row, and

reading an entire tile strip for each row in a single read operation or reading one or more individual tiles in parallel or in asynchronous operation.

6. The method according to claim 5 , wherein reading the tile strip comprises reading from a storage device block size (SDBS) aligned location prior to or equal to a start of an initial tile in the tile strip and ends at a storage device block size (SDBS) aligned location after or equal to an end of a last tile in the tile strip.

7. The method according to claim 6 , further comprising reading multiple individual tiles in parallel or asynchronously, each tile read starts from a storage device block size (SDBS) aligned location prior to or equal to the start of a tile and ends at a storage device block size (SDBS) aligned location after or equal to the end of the same tile.

8. The method according to claim 7 , further comprising collecting and processing only pixels that reside within viewport bounds to generate an output viewport in a single raster.

9. The method according to claim 3 , wherein if the record contains an image stored compressed, tiled, with the tiles arranged in column-major order,

computing top left and bottom right column and row numbers of the tiles containing the viewport,

for each column, launching parallel or asynchronous operations to read tiles for each column, and

reading an entire tile strip for the column in a single read operation or reading one or more individual tiles in parallel or in asynchronous operation.

10. The method according to claim 9 , wherein reading a tile strip comprises reading from a storage device block size (SDBS) aligned location prior to or equal to a start of an initial tile and ending at a storage device block size (SDBS) aligned location after or equal to an end of a last tile.

11. The method according to claim 9 , further comprising reading multiple individual tiles in parallel or asynchronously, each tile read starts from a storage device block size (SDBS) aligned location prior to or equal to a start of a tile and ends at a storage device block size (SDBS) aligned location after or equal to the end of the same tile.

12. The method according to claim 11 , further comprising collecting and processing only pixels that reside within the viewport bounds to generate the output viewport in a single raster.

13. The method according to claim 1 , wherein if the record contains an image stored in a third party tiled file format,

computing a top left and bottom right column and row numbers of the tiles containing the viewport,

determining whether the record metadata section holds a table of offsets and sizes of each tile in the image that exists in a known third-party file format, and

determining whether data in the image is stored in row-major order or column-major order.

14. The method according to claim 13 , wherein if the image data is stored in column-major order,

computing a top left and bottom right column and row numbers of the tiles containing the viewport,

for each column, launching parallel or asynchronous operations to read tiles for each column, and

reading the entire tile strip for the column in a single read operation or reading one or more individual tiles in parallel or in asynchronous operation.

15. The method according to claim 13 , if the image data is stored in row-major order,

computing a top left and bottom right column and row numbers of the tiles containing the viewport,

for each row, launching parallel or asynchronous operations to read tiles for each row, and

reading the entire tile strip for the row in a single read operation or reading one or more individual tiles in parallel or in asynchronous operation.

16. A method of processing a viewport within an image arranged as a matrix of tiles from a file container, the method being implemented by a computer system that includes one or more processors configured to execute processing operations, the method comprising:

reading, by the one or more processors, parameters including an identification of a record where the image containing the viewport is stored, an origin of the viewport and a width in pixels and a height in pixels of the viewport;

requesting, by the one or more processors, the viewport from the file container using the parameters; and

reading, by the one or more processors, data of the viewport starting from the point of origin of the viewport.

17. The method according to claim 16 , further comprising outputting the data of the viewport.

18. The method according to claim 17 , wherein requesting comprises requesting using hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) and wherein the outputting comprises transmitting the data using HTTP.

19. The method according to claim 16 , wherein the reading of the parameters comprises reading a desired format of the image in which a response needs to be delivered.

20. The method according to claim 19 , further comprising transcoding or encoding the data of the viewport into the desired format.

21. The method according to claim 16 , further comprising computing top most row of tiles in the image and left most column of the tiles in the image and bottom most row of the tiles in the image and right most column of the tiles in the image that contain the viewport.

22. The method according to claim 16 , further comprising launching a plurality of asynchronous read requests, each read request being assigned to each row of the tiles contained within the viewport or assigned to each column of the tiles contained within the viewport.

23. The method according to claim 16 , further comprising accumulating pixels that belong in the viewport into a raster in memory that substantially equals a size of the viewport.

24. The method according to claim 16 , further comprising displaying the viewport on a display device or processing the viewport by a processing device to analyze data in the viewport, or both.