3D confocal microscope images are usually anisotropic in that the
xy-pixel size is usually different from the z-step between optical
sections.  To handle this use the "scale" module.  The xy-pixel size
and z-step are often appended to Bio-Rad PIC files in the Notes
section.  You can find these values by using the Unix "strings" and
"grep" commands.  E.g.

>strings COLL6.PIC | grep AXIS
AXIS_0 4 0.000000e+00 1.000000e+00 
AXIS_2 257 -7.008000e+01 1.825000e-01 
AXIS_3 257 -4.672000e+01 1.825000e-01 
AXIS_4 1 -1.000000e+01 2.000003e+00 

0.1825 is the xy-pixel size (value for x- and y-scale in the
"scale" module).

>strings COLL6.PIC | grep Zoom
COLL6.PIC 20-Aug-97 12:25:03 PM  Zoom 5.0  Kalman 3, -10.0 
COLL6.PIC 20-Aug-97 12:25:14 PM  Zoom 5.0  Kalman 3, -8.0 
COLL6.PIC 20-Aug-97 12:25:26 PM  Zoom 5.0  Kalman 3, -6.0 
...

2.0 is the z-pixel size (value for z-scale in the "scale" module).

Note the example file flea3.pic is isotropic and does not require
scaling.

These commands will not work if you are not on a dec alpha platfrom 
because the data is byte swapped. If you are using this module because 
the PICIO module does not work on your platform you will not be able 
to use these commands. At the time this was produced I had little 
information on the file format but if you contact me with file format 
information I could add this functionality.

Contact:
J Leng                            email: j.leng@mcc.ac.uk
Manchester Visualization Centre
University of Manchester
Manchester
M13 9PL
UK