Extract text from virtual microscope slides (VMU)
To convert VMU slides to another format, you need NDP.view 2 or other Raster Image software.
To convert other file formats to the "Virtual Microscopy Archive" file type, you need software like NDP.view 2 or a similar tool.
A .vmu file is an uncompressed virtual microscope specimen file created by Hamamatsu NanoZoomer digital slide scanners. It is widely used in digital pathology to store gigapixel-sized, high-resolution scans of glass medical slides.
These files are typically opened and analyzed using specialized medical imaging software like NDP.view 2, OpenSlide, or ImageJ.
Working with .vmu files is heavily restricted outside of clinical environments. Because the data is uncompressed, these files are absolutely massive, often consuming multiple gigabytes of storage. Furthermore, a .vmu is actually just an INI-style text index file. It relies entirely on a companion folder filled with proprietary uncompressed NGR or JPEG image tiles to render the actual slide. Standard image viewers and web browsers cannot process this multi-file directory structure or handle the extreme resolutions.
Researchers frequently need to convert these slides into standard formats like TIFF for quantitative analysis, or JPG and PNG for publication. Converting the entire slide is rarely practical. You must usually extract a specific Region of Interest (ROI) and export it, which flattens the multi-resolution layers and destroys the dynamic zoom capabilities of the original file.
Because this format relies on an external folder structure, standard online converters will instantly fail to process the isolated index file. If our analysis detects supported embedded image data within your upload, viewing or partial conversion may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your VMU file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted DCI, CPK, GEN and SF7 files.
If you want to convert VMU file to JPG, PDF, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, TIF, WEBP, ICO, CUR, PSD or PSB, you can use NDP.view 2 or similar software from the "Microscope Specimen Image Archive" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert RAW, PNG, AI, NEF, PSB, DNG, SVG, GIF, EPS, JPG, ARW or PDF files to VMU, try NDP.view 2 or another comparable tool in the "Microscope Specimen Image Archive" category.
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 VMU converter.