Opinions regarding MIRAX data file contents

[Benjamin Gilbert (OpenSlide)]

On Fri, August 17, 2012 1:08 am, John Minnie wrote:
> <scaninfo XImagePos="8" YImagePos="115"
> XMotorPos="3006" YMotorPos="47110" ZMotorPos="1356" XMotorError="0"
> YMotorError="0" ZMotorError="0" ObjectLevel="0.0143"
> OpticalFocusLevel="-1"
> LaserFocusLevel="-1.0000" FocusingType="OptPartialRange"
> Neighbours="1:(26;132)" FocalPlane="(26;132)" ImageAcquisitionTime="
> 4616.000 ms"/>
>
> Does anybody have any idea what this data is and if there is any relation
>  between this data and the so-called "slide position file"?

I'd guess that this is the ScanInfoLayer_XMLInfoLevel hierarchical
section, but I haven't verified that.

The XImagePos and YImagePos appear to correspond to camera positions
(i.e., the tile coordinates in the position map dumped by parse-mirax.py,
divided by CameraImageDivisionsPerSide).  I didn't find a clear
relationship between the XMotorPos/YMotorPos and the values in the slide
position map.  Regardless, the values are not large enough to give pixel
precision in level 0, so I don't think this data will help us.

BTW, while investigating this, I modified parse-mirax.py to dump
file/offset/length tuples for all non-hierarchical sections.  The new
version is in Git.

--Benjamin Gilbert