The National Library of Medicine, in partnership with the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research, the National Eye Institute, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute for Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, and the National Cancer Institute, has founded a software consortium to support the creation of a public resource in high-dimension data processing tools. The initial emphasis of this effort is to provide public software tools in 3D segmentation and deformable and rigid registration, capable of analyzing the head-and-neck anatomy of the Visible Human Project data. The eventual goal is for the consortium to provide the cornerstone of a self-sustaining software community in 3D, 4D and higher dimensional data analysis. The consortium is committed to open-source code, public software including open interfaces supporting connections to a broad range of visualization and graphic user interface platforms.