National Imagery Transmission Format

The National Imagery Transmission Format Standard (NITFS) is a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Federal Intelligence Community (IC) suite of standards for the exchange, storage, and transmission of digital-imagery products and image-related products.

DoD policy is that other image formats can be used internally within a single system; however, NITFS is the default format for interchange between systems. NITFS provides a package containing information about the image, the image itself, and optional overlay graphics. (i.e. a "package" containing an image(s), subimages, symbols, labels, and text as well as other information related to the image(s)) NITFS supports the dissemination of secondary digital imagery from overhead collection platforms.

Guidance on applying the suite of standards composing NITFS can be found in MIL-HDBK-1300A, National Imagery Transmission Format Standard (NITFS), 12 October 1994. The NITFS allows for Support Data Extensions (SDEs), which are a collection of data fields that provide space within the NITFS file structure for adding functionality. Documented and controlled separately from the NITFS suite of standards, SDEs extend NITF functionality with minimal impact on the underlying standard document. SDEs may be incorporated into an NITF file while maintaining backward compatibility because the identifier and byte count mechanisms allow applications developed prior to the addition of newly defined data to skip over extension fields they are not designed to interpret. These SDEs are described in the Compendium of Controlled Extensions (CE). This standard is mandated in the DoD for imagery product dissemination.

NITF has been implemented and fielded since the early 90's. Its content evolved over the years to embrace new technology in support of emerging operational requirements. NITF has adopted the ISO/IEC 15444-1 standard for imagery compression, JPEG 2000. Commercial implementations of the standard are largely driven by marketability to the DoD and IC.

Companies with commercially available implementations/products include:

• Avenza Systems - supports import of NITF format into Adobe Systems Photoshop as part of its Geographic Imager plugin suite
• BAE Systems
• Ball Aerospace - Commercial support for Opticks.
• Boeing - DataMaster (Developed by and acquired along with Autometric Inc. in 2000)
• DAT/EM Systems International
• DigitalGlobe
• Eastman Kodak
• ESRI
• ERDAS Inc. (ERDAS IMAGINE)
• GeoEye
• General Dynamics C4 Systems - SelectFocusIMAGE [1] reads/writes/transmits NITF 2.1 images.
• Intergraph
• Harris Corporation
• ITT - ENVI & IAS^[1]
• L-3 Communications/Integrated Systems - Tactical Video Exploitation Suite (TVES) creates and views NITF 2.1 images.^[2]
• LEAD Technologies
• LizardTech
• Paragon Imaging
• PCI Geomatics
• PhotoTelesis
• Recon Optical
• Sensing Systems
• Overwatch - RemoteView (Acquired by Overwatch Geospatial Systems 2006 ^[3])
• Technology Service Corporation (TSC) TENET Technology Ltd - Reader
• Stellar Science - Photoshop File Format Plug-in
• Open Source Geospatial Foundation - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL)
• QinetiQ
• MotionDSP - MotionDSP Ikena ISR product supports opening sequences of NTIF images as a video stream.

A follow-on update to the standard, Mil-Std-2500C, has been released. Following this update to 2500B, future documentation will be done using ISO/IEC documents and processes based on ISO/IEC 12087-5, Basic Image Interchange Format, in lieu of military standards.

The following documents define the standard:

• MIL-STD-2500C(1) — National Imagery Transmission Format (Version 2.1) for the National Imagery Transmission Format Standard, 1 May 2006, Superseding MIL-STD-2500B/CN2
• MIL-STD-2500B(2) — National Imagery Transmission Format (Version 2.1) for the National Imagery Transmission Format Standard, 22 August 1997 with Notice 1, 2 October 1998, and Notice 2, 1 March 2001.
• NITF Extensions 2.1 — The Compendium of Controlled Extensions (CE) for the National Imagery Transmission Format (NITF), Version 2.1, 16 November 2000.
• MIL-STD-188-199(1)— Vector Quantization Decompression for the National Imagery Transmission Format Standard, 27 June 1994 with Notice 1, 27 June 1996.

Free Software

• NITRO is a full-fledged, extensible library solution for reading and writing NITF. It is written in cross-platform C, with bindings available for other languages (Java, Python, C++). Licensed as LGPLv3 and/or GPLv3.
• GDAL supports writing of uncompressed, jpeg compressed and jpeg2000 (with ECW SDK) compressed NITF 2.1 files, and reading NITF 1.1, NITF 2.0, NITF 2.1 and NSIF 1.0 files with uncompressed, jpeg compressed, jpeg2000 (with Kakadu or ECW SDKs) or VQ compressed images.
• Stellar Science NITF Image Library an open-source C++ library capable of reading NITF 2.0 and 2.1 image files.
• Opticks supports reading and writing NITF versions 2.0 and 2.1.
• OSSIM is a set of libraries and tools for geospatial image processing. NITF version 2.0 and 2.1 can be read and written using OSSIM.
• GeoGenesis LITE geospatial data viewer supports the import, viewing and export of NITF imagery.

References

1. ^ https://www.ittvis.com/portals/0/pdfs/ias/IAS_Brochure.pdf
2. ^ http://www.l-3com.com/divisions/overview.aspx?id=83
3. ^ http://www.sensor.com/ow_news_pressrelease.html

External links

• NITFS Technical Board Public Page
• Reference Library for NITFS Users
• Technology Service Corporation
• NITF Escalator Photoshop File Format Plug-in
• NITRO library on SourceForge.net