Sonification of multi-channel image data

This paper presents a method to inspect multi-channel image data by creating audible sonifications, which are 'sound images', computed from a stack of image data. While visualization of multi-channel image data is limited by the available three color channels, our perception of sound is sensitive to a potentially much larger number of frequency channels or dynamic patterns, that can be perceived simultaneously. Browsing the image stack while listening to the sonifications facilitates the identification of intensity patterns and the discrimination of similar patterns. Some sonification designs which use different organization principles of acoustic elements derived from the data in the image stack are presented and sound examples are given. The evaluation of Multi-Parameter Fluorescence Microscopy Data is presented as a well suited application of this sonification method.