BDV-Playground Deconvolution

Tiled, lazy, multi-GPU Richardson–Lucy deconvolution for large 5D microscopy images (XYZ + channels + timepoints), in Python.

pip install bdv-playground-deconvolution   # import bdvpg_deconvolution

It handles images far bigger than GPU memory by working tiled and lazily: each volume is split into overlapping blocks, each block is deconvolved on the GPU, and nothing is computed until you actually browse or export the result. Multiple GPUs (or several contexts on one GPU) can be used in parallel.

All channels and timepoints are processed and written out by default, in the original order, using a single PSF.

Under the hood it drives BigDataViewer-Playground and CLIJ2 through PyImageJ. Python is the orchestration layer.

Why deconvolution

The axial (Z) view is where widefield blur is worst and where deconvolution helps most:

Raw	Deconvolved

Install

uv sync                      # core
uv sync --extra notebook     # + JupyterLab

No conda required, and you do not need to install Java or Maven yourself. scyjava/jgo provision both automatically via cjdk on first use, into a user-level cache (%LOCALAPPDATA%\cjdk on Windows, ~/.cache/cjdk elsewhere).

The only real prerequisite is an OpenCL-capable GPU with vendor drivers installed — that part is not pip-installable.

First run is heavy. Installing is a few MB, but the first run downloads a JDK (~190 MB), Maven, and the ImageJ2/BIOP Maven tree — several hundred MB, once, then cached. It needs maven.scijava.org reachable.

Verify your setup without a GPU or any data:

uv run python smoke_test.py    # boots the JVM, resolves every Java class used

Quick start (CLI)

Headless and save-only — the intended batch / pipeline interface:

uv run bdvpg-deconvolve \
  --image  /path/to/image.czi \
  --psf    /path/to/psf.tif \
  --out    /path/to/output_folder \
  --iterations 120 \
  --threads 10

Writes <image>.ome.tiff to the output folder, preserving channel order. bdvpg-deconvolve --help lists every option.

Notebook

uv run jupyter lab

Open notebooks/Deconvolve.ipynb for interactive parameter tuning and viewing raw + deconvolved side by side in BigDataViewer. Use mode="interactive" (needs a display).

Library

from bdvpg_deconvolution import DeconvolveParams, init_imagej, run

ij = init_imagej(mode="headless", max_heap="32g")
run(DeconvolveParams(
    image_file="image.czi",
    psf_file="psf.tif",
    output_folder="out/",
    num_iterations=120,
), ij=ij)

A JVM starts once per process, so init_imagej() must be called before any work and its mode cannot change afterwards.

Point Spread Function

One single-channel PSF is supplied per image and reused for all channels. If no empirical PSF (e.g. from sub-resolution beads) is available, a theoretical one can be generated with the PSF Generator Fiji plugin.

Parameters

The CLI is save-only by design — it deconvolves and writes an OME-TIFF. Viewing results is the notebook's job: a CLI process exits as soon as the work is done, which tears down the JVM and any BigDataViewer window with it.

Multi-GPU configuration

By default deconvolution runs on a single GPU (device 0). The device pool is configured through ImageJ preferences — a Pool Configuration string of the form device_idx:n_workers, device_idx:n_workers. For example 0:2, 1:4 runs 2 contexts on GPU 0 and 4 on GPU 1, i.e. 6 GPU workers. It persists in the ImageJ preferences and applies to subsequent runs.

Pool workers vs --threads. The pool config sets the number of GPU-side workers. --threads is the number of CPU-side workers feeding that pool (load, convert, hand to GPU, retrieve, write). Keep --threads a bit higher than the total GPU workers so the GPUs are never left waiting.

Nextflow

The CLI is the intended Nextflow interface — one image per task, headless:

process deconvolve {
    input:
      tuple val(sample), path(image), path(psf)
    output:
      path "${image.baseName}.ome.tiff"
    script:
      """
      bdvpg-deconvolve --image ${image} --psf ${psf} --out . \\
                 --iterations ${params.iterations} --threads ${params.threads}
      """
}

One JVM boots per invocation, so one-image-per-task is the right granularity. For reproducible runs, containerise with the OpenCL runtime, a pre-warmed cjdk cache, and a pre-resolved .jgo env so tasks don't each re-download.

Reproducibility

Two package managers are in play. uv.lock pins the Python side; the Java side is pinned by the coordinates in bdvpg_deconvolution/pipeline.py:

DEFAULT_ENDPOINTS = [
    "net.imagej:imagej:2.16.0",
    "ch.epfl.biop:bigdataviewer-biop-tools:0.21.0",
]

Bump those and cut a release when you want to move the Java side.

The JVM itself is not pinned by default — cjdk prefers a suitable system JDK and downloads one otherwise. To pin it, before the first init_imagej():

from scyjava import config
config.set_java_constraints(fetch="always", vendor="zulu", version="21")

Status

The pipeline is a faithful transcription of a production Fiji/Groovy workflow, and the interop layer is verified (smoke_test.py passes: JVM boots, all Java classes and the SourceService resolve). A full GPU run has not been exercised end-to-end here — validate against a known dataset first.

Not yet implemented:

• --check-gpu — enumerate OpenCL devices and fail early with a readable message instead of a CLIJ stack trace mid-run.
• --prefetch — warm the JDK/Maven/jgo caches ahead of first use.

Credits

Built on the BigDataViewer-Playground / Kheops / CLIJ2 stack.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. © Nicolas Chiaruttini, Department of Biochemistry, University of Geneva.

That covers this package's own source, which is pure Python orchestration and ships no Java code. The Java stack it drives is resolved from Maven on your machine at first run, and parts of it are GPL — notably Bio-Formats formats-gpl, which supplies the readers for proprietary formats such as .czi. Simply installing and running this package does not put you under those terms; the GPL restricts copying, distribution and modification, not use.

If you redistribute a bundle that contains those jars — most likely the container image suggested in Nextflow — you are distributing a combined work, and the bundle as a whole must go out under GPL terms. The sources here remain MIT for anyone who takes them on their own.