IMOD Download Page

IMOD is free. We do however request a few things from you to help with the IMOD development.

1. Join the IMOD mailing list to get notifications about new releases and trainings, or the IMOD discussion list, where many questions are raised and answered. These lists also help us keep track of the interest in IMOD.
2. Report bugs so we can fix them and give us feedback on your experiences with IMOD so future versions will contain the features you need.
   
3. If you publish work using IMOD, please reference us. The original citation is: Kremer J.R., Mastronarde, D.N., and McIntosh, J.R. (1996) Computer visualization of three-dimensional image data using IMOD. J. Struct. Biol. 116:71-76.
   For tomographic reconstruction, see also: Mastronarde, D.N. (1997) Dual-axis tomography: an approach with alignment methods that preserve resolution. J. Struct. Biol. 120:343-352.
   as well as: Mastronarde, D.N. and Held, S.R. (2017) Automated tilt series alignment and tomographic reconstruction in IMOD. J. Struct. Biol. 197:102-113.
   For CTF correction, see Mastronarde, D.N. (2024) Accurate, automatic determination of astigmatism and phase with Ctfplotter in IMOD. J. Struct Biol. 216:108057.

Latest Stable Release Packages for:   Linux   -   Mac   -   Windows
Installing on Ubuntu and Debian Linux
IMOD and SELinux
Java for Running Etomo
Cygwin for Using IMOD under Windows
Python and Psutil for Using Windows IMOD without Cygwin
Installation Notes
Extra Packages - Image Data, Documentation, and Standalone 3dmod for Windows
Alpha and Beta Development Versions of IMOD (IMOD 5.2.x)
Package Archive - Older Versions of IMOD

The upgrade packages that are available for most systems contain all of IMOD itself but not the third-party libraries that make packages so large. They will use the libraries in your current version if they are the same; otherwise they will try to download the appropriate library package and add that in.

To use a GPU for computing, see IMOD Guide for more details about which packages work with which NVIDIA driver versions and operating system versions.

Latest Stable Release Packages - Linux

All Linux versions are 64-bit. All packages are built with Qt 5 and support high-DPI monitors.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 - CUDA 12: Download IMOD 5.1.2 full or upgrade package This package is built under RHEL8 with CUDA 12.0 and requires drivers that support CUDA 12 or higher. It should be used if you have such drivers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 - CUDA 12: Download IMOD 5.1.2 full or upgrade package This package is built under RHEL7 with CUDA 12.0 and requires drivers that support CUDA 12 or higher. It should be used if you have such drivers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 - CUDA 10: Download IMOD 5.1.2 full or upgrade package This package is built under RHEL7 with CUDA 10.1 and requires drivers that support CUDA 10 or higher. It should be used if you do not have drivers supporting CUDA 12.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 - CUDA 8: Download IMOD 5.1.2 full or upgrade package This package is built under RHEL7 with CUDA 8.0 and requires drivers that support CUDA 8 or higher, and should be used if you do not have drivers supporting CUDA 10.

Latest Stable Release Packages - Mac

If you download a command-line self-installing file (ending in ".sh"), it cannot be clicked on to install it; see the IMOD Guide for instructions on running it at the command line. All Mac packages are 64-bit.

Mac OS 11 - 15+ for M1 processor: Download clickable installer or command-line self-installing file of IMOD 5.1.2 for Mac OS 11 - 15.x running on an M1 processor.

Mac OS 11 - 15+ for Intel processor: Download clickable installer or command-line self-installing file of IMOD 5.1.2 for Mac OS 11 - 15.x running on an Intel processor. These packages cannot do FFTs on an M1 Mac; you must get an "arm64" package for full functionality.

Mac OS 10.14 - 11: Download clickable installer or command-line self-installing file of IMOD 5.1.2 for Mac OS 10.14 - 13.x. This package was built on 10.14 and will not work properly on high-DPI displays. This version does work on an M1 processor.

In OS 12.3 and onward, Python must be installed on the system to install and use IMOD.. Efficient options are to use this Python 3.10.7 universal installer package that runs on Intel and M1 processors, or to install in homebrew, if you are already using homebrew for other packages. See the IMOD Guide for more details.

Latest Stable Release Packages - Windows

These packages work on all versions of Windows from Windows XP through Windows 11. The 64-bit packages will not work with 32-bit Windows. You need to have either Cygwin or Python installed to install IMOD; see below. A package built with CUDA 8 should be used if you have drivers that support CUDA 8 or 9; the package built with CUDA 10 should should be used if you have drivers that support CUDA 10 or CUDA 11; the package built with CUDA 12 should be used if you have drivers that support CUDA 12 or higher.

Windows packages and executables are now signed so that the download and installation will proceed smoothly. The signer is identified as Nexperion e.U., a company owned by Guenter Resch, the person who provides SerialEM software support. The signing does occur at the University of Colorado, on the computer doing automated builds. If, despite the signature, your browser posts a message that the download was blocked because it could harm your device, press the ... (three dots) instead of Delete and select Keep in the popup. If you then get another message from Defender SmartScreen that "this app is not commonly downloaded", click on Show more instead of Delete or Cancel and select Keep anyway.

Windows 64-bit with CUDA 12: Download full clickable installer or full command-line self-installing file of IMOD 5.1.2 for 64-bit Windows versions, built with CUDA 12.1. You should use these packages if your drivers support CUDA 12 or higher.

Windows 64-bit with CUDA 10: Download full clickable installer or full command-line self-installing file of IMOD 5.1.2 for 64-bit Windows versions, built with CUDA 10.1. You should use these packages if your drivers support CUDA 10 or CUDA 11.

Windows 64-bit with CUDA 8: Download full clickable installer or full command-line self-installing file of IMOD 5.1.2 for 64-bit Windows versions, built with CUDA 8.0, and should be used if you have drivers supporting CUDA 8 or 9.

Windows 64-bit without CUDA: Download full clickable installer or full command-line self-installing file of IMOD 5.1.2 for 64-bit Windows versions, built without CUDA so it is small.

Windows 32-bit without CUDA: Download full clickable installer or full command-line self-installing file of IMOD 5.1.2 for 32-bit Windows. These packages are built without CUDA but there is high-DPI support.

Installing on Ubuntu and Debian Linux

A few steps are different when installing on Ubuntu, and these are described at various places in the installation instructions in the IMOD Guide. In essence:

• You should be able to install without any special options on Ubuntu; use the -debian option for a Debian system.
  
• You should not need to install Qt; it is included in the IMOD package. You should not need to install gfortran.
  
• You should use an RHEL8 package for newer Ubuntu versions, or an RHEL7 package for older Ubuntu versions.
  
• You will probably need to log out and log back in to be able to run IMOD programs after installing it for the first time.

IMOD and SELinux

If SELinux is enabled, the IMOD installation script will attempt to change the security context of the IMOD libraries if appropriate. If problems still occur with SELinux, please report them. The sign of trouble with SELinux is a message "cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied" when trying to run an IMOD program. To disable SELinux, change /etc/selinux/config so that it says SELINUX=disabled.

Java for Running Etomo

You must have a Java run-time environment (JRE) installed to run the Etomo interface for building tomograms. See the IMOD Guide for details on acquiring and installing Java for the various systems. Java 1.7 or later is required for IMOD 4.11. If you need to install Java, we recommend getting the latest Java Run-time Environment from the Adoptium download site, not from Oracle.

Cygwin for Using IMOD under Windows

For complete IMOD functionality under Windows, you need to install either the Cygwin toolkit or Python (see next section). To simplify the process of installing Cygwin, we provide both a Cygwin installer for the easiest possible initial installation, and also a Cygwin package that you can install from. You can also use the latter package to upgrade from an earlier package that we provided. When you upgrade, you may see an alarming warning about mount point changes; this is not relevant for typical usage of Cygwin. Download links are in this table; you must use the oldest Cygwin for Windows XP, and the newer ones for Windows 10 or 11. To satisfy the terms of the Cygwin open source license, we also provide the source code matching the binaries in our package.

IMOD 4.11 should work reliably with the current version available from Cygwin, even on 64-bit systems. However, the Python executable in current versions is not named python.exe, which is problematic. If you reinstall IMOD after upgrading Cygwin, the IMOD installer will take care of this; otherwise, see the IMOD guide.

Python and Psutil for Using Windows IMOD without Cygwin

To use IMOD fully without Cygwin on Windows, you need to install Python and a module called psutil built for the same version of Python. You do not need these packages if you are using Cygwin. You do not need to upgrade if you already have an installation that works for IMOD. Some packages are provided here:

• 64-bit Python 3.12 and matching psutil     (runs on Windows 8 and above)
• 64-bit Python 3.8 and matching psutil     (runs on Windows 7 and above)
• 64-bit Python 3.3 and matching psutil     (runs on Windows XP and above)
• 32-bit Python 3.3 and matching psutil
• 64-bit Python 2.7 and matching psutil
• 32-bit Python 2.7 and matching psutil

See the IMOD guide for further instructions. The short version: 1) install Python first, running it as Administrator for Python 3.8; install for all users, and add to path if that option is offered; 2) to install psutil executables on Windows Vista/7/8/10/11, you need to right-click and "Run as Administrator"; 3) to install psutil ".whl" files like the one for Python 3.8 or 3.12, open a Command Prompt window as Administrator, cd to the location of the psutil file, and enter pip install psutil*.

Installation Notes

The download packages ending in .sh have been packed with a sh script that will install or upgrade IMOD in the recommended location. They must be run as scripts at the command line and cannot be installed by clicking on them. The Windows installer packages ending in .exe and the Mac packages ending in .pkg can be run by clicking on them.

Except on Windows without Cygwin, all of these command-line self-installing files (including the upgrade packages) can be installed with
    sudo sh filename     (for Linux and Mac)
or
    sudo sh filename     (for Cygwin on Windows)
where for "filename" you use the full name of the downloaded file. For more detailed instructions on unpacking, installing and setting up the IMOD environment, see the IMOD User's guide.

• Sample 3D data set.
• Etomo tutorial data set., unbinned, used in the 4.11 tutorial document and in our tutorial videos at YouTube
• Binned tutorial data set, used in tthe turtorial for previous IMOD versions.
• Join tutorial data set for current IMOD versions.
• Sample data set for the tutorial on reconstructing a cryotomogram with fiducials.
• Sample data set for the tutorial on reconstructing a frozen-hydrated section with patch tracking.
• Sample TS43 data set from EMPIAR-10164 for the tutorial on CTF correction.
• Sample K2 data set for the tutorial on CTF correction.
• Sample DE-12 data set for the tutorial on CTF correction.
• Sample UltraScan data set for the tutorials on CTF correction and reconstructing with SIRT and a SIRT-like filter.
• Sample tomogram for the tutorial on filtering with Nonlinear Anisotropic Diffusion (NAD).
• IMOD documentation in its original HTML form, for viewing in web browsers. The documentation distributed with the package is in a compressed HTML file readable only by Qt Assistant. This program is invoked with imodhelp at the command line, or from the help facilities of Etomo, 3dmod, Midas, and Ctfplotter.
• A copy of 3dmod and associated files that can be run on Windows without installing IMOD or Cygwin is available here. The package unpacks to C:\Program Files\3dmod and a shortcut can be set up to run 3dmod from there. The package also contains Ctfplotter, Genhstplot, and Midas.
• Standalone versions of Ctfplotter built without Qt are available here for all three operating systems. They contain just the essential libraries for this non-GUI version.

This site also contains development versions of IMOD that we have released to our local users. See the README file or the list of changes for details. To download a file, right click on it and then select "Save Link as..." or "Save Target as...". Double-clicking will load it into your browser.

Click here for the beta versions, which have generally been running for at least a few days. The alpha subdirectory has the packages when they are first released.

We also make our nightly builds from the current source available. There will often be bugs in these packages, so generally you should not use one unless you have been told to try it. Here they are.

If you use a development version, the best source of documentation is in the package itself, available through the imodhelp command. Click here to access all documentation in the latest development version, updated nightly.

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 - 7/Fedora Core 6
• Microsoft Windows
• Mac OS X

Last comprehensive update, December 11, 2020.