Name: PIV software usage in the scientific literature (2016–2025)
Creator: W. Thielicke

This page compares how often 30 PIV (particle image velocimetry) software packages are mentioned in scientific papers. Every package is counted with the same exact-phrase full-text search in OpenAlex, covering the last 10 fully completed years (2016–2025). The page is updated automatically every month.

Most mentioned in 2025: PIVlab (240 papers), LaVision DaVis (120), Dantec Dynamic Studio / FlowManager (37), OpenPIV (30), Flownizer (16).
Most mentioned 2016–2025 in total: PIVlab (1691 papers), LaVision DaVis (1388), Dantec Dynamic Studio / FlowManager (454), TSI Insight (209), OpenPIV (208). For comparison: OpenAlex lists 4,176 papers from 2025 that contain the phrase "particle image velocimetry".

Methodology ▼

This tool was built by W. Thielicke (PIVlab). The same metric is applied to every software package. The complete source code and the full methodology (including every search query and a reusable recipe) are public.

How every package is counted (same metric for all): Every software package is counted with the same metric:

Exact-phrase full-text search via OpenAlex default.search: software names are searched as quoted exact phrases in the full text (title + abstract + body where indexed). Quotes prevent stemming false-positives.
"particle image velocimetry" required: this phrase must appear literally in the text. Guarantees PIV context without relying on ML tags. Eliminates false positives from multi-purpose names (e.g. DaVis, TSI, GPIV).
Spelling variants: alternate forms are OR-combined (e.g. "OpenPIV" OR "open piv").
Commercial software: the company name must also appear in the text (e.g. "Dantec" AND "Dynamic Studio").

Example filter: default.search:"LaVision" AND "DaVis" AND "particle image velocimetry",publication_year:2016-2025
Known limitation: open-source tools (PIVlab, OpenPIV, …) are almost always named explicitly by authors; commercial tools are sometimes described only as "commercial software" without naming them. This means commercial tools may still be undercounted relative to their true usage, even with full-text search.
Note: OpenAlex covers ~96% of the literature. Only the last 10 fully completed years (2016–2025) are shown; the window moves forward by one year every January.

Search terms per software

Software	Search term	Note
PIVlab	("PIVlab" OR "PIV lab") AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "PIVlab" + PIV phrase
MatPIV	"MatPIV" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "MatPIV" + PIV phrase
GeoPIV / GeoPIV-RG	("GeoPIV" OR "GeoPIV-RG" OR "Geo PIV") AND "particle image velocimetry"	"GeoPIV" OR "GeoPIV-RG" OR "Geo PIV" (spacing variant; all geotechnical) + PIV phrase
OpenPIV	("OpenPIV" OR "open piv" OR "openpiv-matlab" OR "openpiv matlab") AND "particle image velocimetry"	"OpenPIV" OR "open piv" OR "openpiv-matlab" OR "openpiv matlab" + PIV phrase
PaIRS-UniNa	"PaIRS-UniNa" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "PaIRS-UniNa" + PIV phrase (unquoted "PaIRS" matches "pairs")
FluidImage	("fluidimage" OR "fluiddyn") AND "particle image velocimetry"	"fluidimage" OR "fluiddyn" (parent project) + PIV phrase
UVMAT / CIVx	"UVMAT" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "UVMAT" + PIV phrase
JPIV	"JPIV" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "JPIV" + PIV phrase
GPIV	"GPIV" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "GPIV" + PIV phrase (removes medical-literature false positives)
PRANA	"PRANA" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "PRANA" + PIV phrase (removes non-PIV uses)
PIVmat	"PIVmat" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "PIVmat" + PIV phrase
DigiFlow	"DigiFlow" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "DigiFlow" + PIV phrase
CIVx	"CIVx" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "CIVx" + PIV phrase
mpiv	"mpiv" AND "Mori" AND "Chang" AND "particle image velocimetry"	"mpiv" AND "Mori" AND "Chang" + PIV phrase (authors required: bare "mpiv" matches micro-PIV/uPIV)
DPIVSoft	"DPIVSoft" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "DPIVSoft" + PIV phrase (specific token; 22/23 co-occur with Meunier)
PIVsuite	"PIVsuite" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "PIVsuite" + PIV phrase ("PIV suite" 2-word rejected as generic)
Fluere	"Fluere" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "Fluere" + PIV phrase (PIV phrase removes Latin-word false positives)
EDPIV	"EDPIV" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "EDPIV" + PIV phrase (specific token; clean)
PIVtools	"PIVtools" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "PIVtools" + PIV phrase ("PIV tools" 2-word rejected as generic)
LaVision DaVis	"LaVision" AND "DaVis" AND "particle image velocimetry"	"LaVision" (company) AND "DaVis" (software, non-adjacent) AND PIV phrase
Dantec Dynamic Studio / FlowManager	"Dantec" AND ("Dynamic Studio" OR "dynamicstudio" OR "FlowManager" OR "Flow Manager") AND "particle image velocimetry"	"Dantec" AND (DynamicStudio \| FlowManager spellings) AND PIV phrase (FlowManager = pre-2010 predecessor, merged)
TSI Insight	("TSI Insight" OR "Insight 4G" OR "Insight4G") AND "particle image velocimetry"	Phrase "TSI Insight" OR "Insight 4G"/"Insight4G" (version name) + PIV phrase
PIVview	("PIVview" OR "PIVTEC") AND "particle image velocimetry"	"PIVview" (software) OR "PIVTEC" (company) + PIV phrase
IDT ProVision	"IDT" AND "ProVision" AND "particle image velocimetry"	"IDT" (company) AND "ProVision" (software) AND PIV phrase
MicroVec	"MicroVec" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "MicroVec" + PIV phrase
Flownizer	"Flownizer" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "Flownizer" + PIV phrase; "Ditect" excluded (camera brand, not software)
FTR-PIV	("FTR-PIV" OR "FTRPIV") AND "particle image velocimetry"	"FTR-PIV" OR "FTRPIV" (one-word form; 12/13 co-occur with FlowTech) + PIV phrase
VidPIV	"VidPIV" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "VidPIV" + PIV phrase
ILA PIVtec	"PIVtec" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "PIVtec" (product brand) + PIV phrase
YSC Flow Analyzer	"YSC" AND "particle image velocimetry"	Exact phrase "YSC" + PIV phrase

Summary Table ▼

Software⇅	Category⇅	Developer⇅	Total (2016-2025)⇅	Recent (2025)⇅	Peak year⇅	Peak count⇅	Top field⇅	Top country⇅
PIVlab	Open Source	W. Thielicke	1691	240	2023	252	Engineering	United States
LaVision DaVis	Commercial	LaVision GmbH	1388	120	2021	179	Engineering	United States
Dantec Dynamic Studio / FlowManager	Commercial	Dantec Dynamics	454	37	2020	55	Engineering	France
TSI Insight	Commercial	TSI Inc.	209	13	2019	28	Engineering	United Kingdom
OpenPIV	Open Source	OpenPIV Team	208	30	2024	35	Engineering	United States
GeoPIV / GeoPIV-RG	Free / Academic	White, Stanier et al.	191	11	2016	28	Engineering	United Kingdom
Flownizer	Commercial	Ditect Co. Ltd.	182	16	2019	25	Engineering	United States
PIVview	Commercial	PIVTEC GmbH	181	8	2021	25	Engineering	Germany
MatPIV	Open Source	J.K. Sveen	158	7	2022	25	Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology	United States
ILA PIVtec	Commercial	ILA GmbH / PIVtec	140	6	2022	20	Engineering	Germany
JPIV	Open Source	P. Vennemann	47	2	2016	8	Engineering	United Kingdom
MicroVec	Commercial	MicroVec Inc.	46	4	2024	13	Engineering	China
PRANA	Open Source	Eckstein & Vlachos	41	2	2016	6	Engineering	United States
PIVmat	Open Source	F. Moisy	33	1	2019	8	Engineering	France
DigiFlow	Commercial	Dalziel Research Partners	32	0	2016	8	Engineering	United Kingdom
mpiv	Open Source	N. Mori & K.-A. Chang	28	2	2017	5	Earth and Planetary Sciences	United States
FTR-PIV	Commercial	FlowTech Research	19	0	2016	3	Engineering	Japan
DPIVSoft	Open Source	P. Meunier & T. Leweke	19	1	2020	5	Engineering	France
UVMAT / CIVx	Open Source	J.-M. Foucaut et al.	19	0	2020	4	Engineering	France
VidPIV	Commercial	Oxford Lasers	16	1	2016	4	Engineering	Australia
IDT ProVision	Commercial	IDT	14	1	2024	3	Engineering	India
FluidImage	Open Source	P. Augier et al.	13	2	2019	3	Engineering	France
PaIRS-UniNa	Free / Academic	Univ. of Naples	12	6	2025	6	Engineering	Italy
GPIV	Open Source	G.H. de Graaf	8	0	2016	3	Engineering	United States
CIVx	Open Source	Gostiaux, Salort (ENS Lyon)	7	0	2021	3	Engineering	France
PIVsuite	Open Source	PIVsuite project	7	0	2020	2	Earth and Planetary Sciences	United Kingdom
Fluere	Free / Academic	Fluere project	6	1	2018	2	Engineering	Germany
EDPIV	Free / Academic	L. Gui	4	0	2016	2	Engineering	United States
YSC Flow Analyzer	Commercial	YSC Corp.	3	0	2017	1	Engineering	United States
PIVtools	Open Source	Taylor, Lawson & Ganapathisubramani (Univ. of Southampton)	1	0	2022	1	Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology	India

Papers per Year (linear scale) ▼

Papers per Year (log scale — shows smaller software) ▼

Total Papers 2016–2025 ▼

Publication Venue Impact (JIF proxy) ▼

Shows the paper-weighted mean 2-year journal citedness of the venues in which papers mentioning each software are published — OpenAlex’s open stand-in for the journal impact factor. Read this carefully: it measures the citation reputation of the journals a tool appears in, not the quality of the software or of the individual papers. It is also strongly field-dependent (e.g. biomedical/microfluidics journals carry higher citedness than experimental fluid-mechanics journals for structural reasons), so tools used in different subfields are not directly comparable here. Bars show n, the number of papers each score rests on — a high score based on only a handful of papers is largely chance and should be read with caution. Treat this chart as a rough indicator, not a verdict.

PIV Software — Academic Usage Statistics

Methodology ▼

Search terms per software

Summary Table ▼

Papers per Year (linear scale) ▼

Papers per Year (log scale — shows smaller software) ▼

Total Papers 2016–2025 ▼

Publication Venue Impact (JIF proxy) ▼

Market Share (% of Total PIV Literature) ▼

Open Source vs. Commercial (combined) ▼

Research Field Distribution ▼

Field Distribution per Software (% of papers) ▼

Top Countries per Software ▼

Geographic Distribution (all software) ▼