Extract text from VSI files
To convert your VSI file to another format, you need Olympus cellSens or other Raster Image software.
To convert other file formats to the "Bio-Imaging Container" file type, you need software like Olympus cellSens or a similar tool.
The .vsi file extension primarily represents the Virtual Slide Image format, a high-performance bio-imaging container developed by Evident (formerly Olympus) for their cellSens and VS-series slide scanners. These files are sophisticated, multi-layer TIFF-based containers capable of storing gigapixel-resolution microscopy data. While powerful for scientific analysis, .vsi files present significant hurdles: they often exceed several gigabytes in size, use complex pyramidal tiling that crashes standard image viewers, and require expensive, proprietary software like cellSens to open natively. For easier sharing and publication, researchers typically convert these huge datasets to standard TIFF, OME-TIFF, or JPEG formats.
A secondary, less common use (approx. 1%) is the Visual Studio Content Installer. Used by older versions of Microsoft Visual Studio, these files package macros and add-ins. They are essentially renamed ZIP archives. Users encountering this legacy format often struggle with compatibility in modern IDEs; renaming the extension to zip allows for immediate inspection and extraction of the internal manifests and XML data.
Convert.Guru analyzes your VSI file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted ETS, VIS, ZIP, JPG, PNG, TIF, SCN, TXT, SGD, CDXML, PDF, INI and OPJU files.
If you want to convert VSI file to TIFF, JPG, SVS, ZIP, RAR, 7Z, TAR, GZ, BZ2, XZ, LZMA or CAB, you can use Olympus cellSens or similar software from the "Microscopy Slide Imaging" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert XXE, 7Z, Z, PAK, LHA, DEB, UUE, TAR, LZH, ZIP, PKG or RAR files to VSI, try Olympus cellSens or another comparable tool in the "Microscopy Slide Imaging" 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 VSI converter.