Overview

Imago is a toolkit for 2D chemical structure image recognition. In contains a GUI program and a command-line utility, as well as a documented API for developers. Imago is completely free and open-source, while also available on a commercial basis.

The core part of Imago is written from scratch in modern C++ and uses no third-party code. It uses the best known algorithms for optical recognition. All this guarantees Imago's outstanding portability and performance.

Imago is under active development. You can post us your comments and suggestions and get timely replies from the developers' team.

Recognized Molecule Properties

• Single, double, triple bonds
• Atom labels, subscripts, isotopes, charges
• Superatoms
• Rings
• Touching characters
• Stereochemistry (up- and down-bonds)

Portability

Imago library is written in portable C++ and supports Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X operating systems, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of each system. libraries are needed for loading PNG files. No other third-party components are used.

Imago exposes the C interface to applications. Java wrapper is available for all supported platforms.

A Java GUI application called Ego is provided.

A command-line utility called alter-ego is provided as well.

List of Dependencies

The dependencies are included into the distribution packages, and so you do do not need to download any of them to run the programs or to compile the source code.

• zlib and libpng
• Boost
• JNA (for Java wrapper and Ego)
• PDFRenderer (only for Ego)
• Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) (only for Ego, part of Java SDK)

Supported Data Formats

While alter-ego utility accepts PNG images, Ego users can open PNG, JPG, PDF, or TIFF files, select the needed document page (if it is PDF or TIFF), and select a fragment that should be recognized.

Developers who use the C API can pass PNG images or raw image data to the library.

Both alter-ego and Ego can save the recognized molecules into MDL (Symyx, Accelrys) Molfiles. Ego also provides a possibility to copy the recognized molecule to the system clipboard.

Download and Install

Look at the Downloads page for the installation package suitable for your system. There is an installer for Windows, and zipfiles for Linux and Mac OS X, which you can just unpack into /usr/local/bin or /opt directory, or into your home directory.

License

Copyright © 2010-2011 GGA Software Services LLC

This program is free software: You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 3 of the License.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If you did not, please see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Commercial Availability

If the GPL-licensed Imago does not fit your needs, please contact us at info@ggasoftware.com to discuss the purchase of a commercial license. You may need the commercial license if you want to:

• Receive ongoing support and maintenance
• Include Imago as a component in your proprietary software product