IDL (Interactive Data Language) is a popular data visualization and analysis platform used for interactive processing of large amounts of data including images.
IDL possesses the ability to interact with Java applications via its IDL-Java bridge. Karsten Rodenacker has written a script that uses Bio-Formats to read in image files to IDL.
Download the ij_read_bio_formats.pro script from Karsten Rodenacker's IDL goodies (?) web site. See the comments at the top of the script for installation instructions and caveats.
To use a newer version of Bio-Formats, overwrite the requisite JAR files with the :downloads:`newer version <>` and restart IDL.