HCSLayer

[manzt]

Since there is a way to express a HCS layout in both OME-XML and OME-Zarr, it might be beneficial to add a special layer to viv. In vizarr, @will-moore has explored using many ImageLayers hms-dbmi/vizarr#43.

Proposal

Add an HCSLayer to display a grid of images with the same rendering settings. This should have the same API as ImageLayer and MultiscaleImageLayer except it should take a loaders rather than loader as a prop.

const gridLayer = new HCSLayer({
	id: 'my-layer',
    loaders, // { 'A1': loader0, 'A2' loader1, 'A3': loader3, ...etc } or something similar?
	loaderSelection,
    colorValues,
    sliderValues,
    ...props
});

Potential issues

Although OME-XML and OME-Zarr both express the HCS layout, we treat the formats differently with our loaders. The OME-TIFF loader will need some work to be interchangeable here with something that is zarr-based. I think this might be a good opportunity to refactor the loaders and unify what a lazy-nd array is for viv.

[ilan-gold]

Just putting a reminder here for myself or future developers, but HuBMAP has a potential use-case for a grid-layer for comparing different datasets (not just HCS) quickly and easily