Saving 16-bit grayscale images

[Tidal]

I want to save 16-bit grayscale images acquired with a CCD camera in PNG format. The PNG specification supports 16-bit grayscale, however the LabVIEW Write PNG File.vi does not.

[GabbyG]

I am quite sure it does.
Have you tried to read it back into Labview (6.02)? Paintshop 6, that I use to view saved images, seems not to recognize the 16 bit, but reduces it to 8 bit. It does this quite unintelligently, not shifting but simply clipping away the most significant 8 bits.
Maybe this is due to the limitations of a standard monitor resolution, that uses it's 24 bits to display 8 bits of red, green and blue each, so that a gray image (where red, green and blue are all equal) is reduced to 8 bits effectively.

Or NI used a special encoding. I understand that PNG was only recently fully specified.

Gabi

[Tidal]

16-bit support was included in the PNG spec specifically for medical imaging applications. I'm not sure how or if a standard monitor handles it. LabVIEW's Read PNG File.vi and Write PNG File.vi only support 1, 2, 4, 8 and 24-bit images; for some reason they've left out 16-bit.