Besides tables, BDF files (images) are the most important MIDAS structure. Therefore, we included `high-level' interfaces, using the interfaces described earlier, to handle images, i.e., the data and the connected descriptive information, in a very simple and compact way. These routines use the 'mapping' mechanism to access the data, which may not be the most efficient way in UNIX systems (see the discussion above). However, the following interfaces provide an easy and painless way to manage MIDAS image files in an application. In fact, many algorithms could be integrated into MIDAS by just using the `image' interfaces and STSPRO and STSEPI.