In computer programming contexts, a data cube (or datacube) is a three- (or higher) dimensional array of values, commonly used to describe a time series

Time series

In statistics, signal processing, econometrics and mathematical finance, a time series is a sequence of data points, measured typically at successive times spaced at uniform time intervals. Examples of time series are the daily closing value of the Dow Jones index or the annual flow volume of the...

 of image data. A data cube is also used in the field of Imaging spectroscopy

Imaging spectroscopy

Imaging spectroscopy is similar to color photography, but each pixel acquires many bands of light intensity data from the spectrum, instead of just the three bands of the RGB color model...

, since a spectrally-resolved image is represented as a three-dimensional volume.

For a time sequence of color images, the array is generally four-dimensional, with the dimensions representing image X and Y coordinates, time, and RGB (or other color space

Color space

A color model is an abstract mathematical model describing the way colors can be represented as tuples of numbers, typically as three or four values or color components...

) color plane.

Many high-level computer languages treat data cubes and other large arrays as single entities distinct from their contents. These languages, of which APL

APL programming language

APL is an interactive array-oriented language and integrated development environment, which is available from a number of commercial and noncommercial vendors and for most computer platforms. It is based on a mathematical notation developed by Kenneth E...

, IDL, NumPy, PDL

Perl Data Language

PDL is a set of array programming extensions to the Perl programming language.PDL is an extension to Perl v5, intended for scientific and other data intensive programming tasks...

, and S-Lang are examples, allow the programmer to manipulate complete film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 clips and other data en masse with simple expressions derived from linear algebra

Linear algebra

Linear algebra is a branch of mathematics that studies vector spaces, also called linear spaces, along with linear functions that input one vector and output another. Such functions are called linear maps and can be represented by matrices if a basis is given. Thus matrix theory is often...

 and vector mathematics. Some languages (such as PDL) distinguish between a list of images and a data cube, while many (such as IDL) do not.

A tensor

Tensor

Tensors are geometric objects that describe linear relations between vectors, scalars, and other tensors. Elementary examples include the dot product, the cross product, and linear maps. Vectors and scalars themselves are also tensors. A tensor can be represented as a multi-dimensional array of...

of rank three may be represented as a data cube.