Index Ordering

NRRD stores the image elements in row-major ordering where the row can be seen as the fastest-varying axis. The header fields of NRRD that describes the axes are always specified in the order from fastest-varying to slowest-varying, i.e., sizes will be equal to (# rows, # columns). This is also applicable to images of higher dimensions.

Both the reading and writing functions in pynrrd include an index_order parameter that is used to specify whether the returned data array should be in C-order (‘C’) or Fortran-order (‘F’).

Fortran-order is where the dimensions of the multi-dimensional data is ordered from fastest-varying to slowest-varying, i.e. in the same order as the header fields. So for a 3D set of data, the dimensions would be ordered (x, y, z).

On the other hand, C-order is where the dimensions of the multi-dimensional data is ordered from slowest-varying to fastest-varying. So for a 3D set of data, the dimensions would be ordered (z, y, x).

C-order is the index order used in Python and many Python libraries (e.g. NumPy, scikit-image, PIL, OpenCV). pynrrd recommends using C-order indexing to be consistent with the Python community. However, as of this time, the default indexing is Fortran-order to maintain backwards compatibility. In the future, the default index order will be switched to C-order.

Note

Converting from one index order to the other is done via transposing the data.

Note

All header fields are specified in Fortran order, per the NRRD specification, regardless of the index order. For example, a C-ordered array with shape (60, 800, 600) would have a sizes field of (600, 800, 60).