scope:

This part of ISO/IEC 12087 establishes the specification of the application program interface (ATI), called the Programmer's Imaging Kernel System (PIKS) ISO/IEC 12087-1 establishes the conceptual and architectural definitions of the Common Architecture for Imaging (CAI), ISO/IEC 12087-3 establishes the specification of the Image Intechange Facility (IIF).

PIKS is intended to provide a rich set of both low-level and high-level services on image and image-derived data objects. These services can be used as building blocks for a broad range of common imaging applications.

A conscious effort has been made by the developers of PIKS to create a standard that does not favour any particular computing system. Implementations of PIKS should be possible on computing systems ranging in architecture from general purpose computers to specialised hardware accelerators, ranging in size from personal computers to mainframe supercomputers, and ranging in connectivity form standalone machines to distributed computing networks.

Where applicable, PIKS relies on other API's and data format standards to provide capabilities that are not unique to imaging. The following lists contain a summary of technological capabilities provided by PIKS and not provided by PIKS. However, it should be noted that PIKS functionality may be useful as a pre-processor or co-processor for many of the technologies in the "Not provided by PIKS" list.