The use of multifocal-plane, time-lapse recordings of living specimens has allowed investigators to visualize dynamic events both within ensembles of cells and individual cells. Recordings of such four-dimensional~4D! data from digital optical sectioning microscopy produce very large data sets. We describe a wavelet-based data compression algorithm that capitalizes on the inherent redunancies within multidimensional data to achieve higher compression levels than can be obtained from single

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... s. The algorithm will permit remote users to roam through large 4D data sets using communication channels of modest bandwidth at high speed. This will allow animation to be used as a powerful aid to visualizing dynamic changes in three-dimensional structures.