History

The HyperImage Virtual Research Environment originated as a project funded from 2006 to 2009 by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of their Grid Initiative. The project deliverables were released as Open Source Software. HyperImage has been integrated into the prometheus Image Archive, which provides a common interface to 78 image databases, as part of the follow-on project Meta-Image, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Several HyperImage installations exist at German and other European universities and research institutions and the software is employed successfully in research and teaching.

As part of an innovative strategy to ensure the continued development and long-term availability of this open source software, the maintainers of HyperImage have founded the Berlin-based company bitGilde IT Solutions UG. The company pursues development of the system in close cooperation with current and potential users, furthermore it provides access to a HyperImage installation.

A new version of HyperImage is currently being developed.