Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your BD1 file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert BD1 to another file type
To convert BD1 images to another format, you need AlphaEaseFC or other Raster Image software.
Convert a file to BD1
To convert other file formats to the "Scientific Image Data" file type, you need software like AlphaEaseFC or a similar tool.
About BD1 files
.BD1 files are proprietary raster images used in bioinformatics to store DNA sequencing data and gel electrophoresis results. They are generated by specialized laboratory hardware from companies like LI-COR Biosciences and Bio-Rad. In a typical laboratory setting, these files are analyzed using specific proprietary software, such as AlphaEaseFC. The main disadvantage of the .BD1 format is its highly restrictive, closed nature. Users face major challenges because the files require expensive software licenses to open and are completely unsupported by standard web browsers or regular photo editors like Adobe Photoshop. If you need to include a gel image in a research paper, presentation, or share it with colleagues outside the lab, you must convert it. The best conversion targets are lossless image formats like TIFF or PNG. Converting to a lossy format like JPG is generally not recommended because compression artifacts can ruin the scientific accuracy of the gel bands. Because it is a closed, proprietary format, this file is notoriously difficult to open or convert outside the lab. Standard online converters routinely fail to process it because they lack the specialized scientific decoding libraries. Often, only the original lab software can properly read or export the full dynamic range data. Despite this, convert.guru offers a pragmatic workaround. Just drag and drop your .BD1 file into our tool to identify the format, view embedded text, and inspect the internal structure. If our analysis detects a supported underlying or embedded format, viewing or conversion may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your BD1 file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert BD1 file to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT, DB or SQL, you can use AlphaEaseFC or similar software from the "Scientific Gel Image Data" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to BD1, try AlphaEaseFC or another comparable tool in the "Scientific Gel Image Data" category.
The BD1 Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our BD1 converter.