code: def _imread(self, file):
          
          # For now, we have to select the imageio plugin to read image from byte stream
          # When ski-image v0.15 is released, imageio will be the default plugin, so this
          # code can be simplified at that time.  See issue report and pull request:
          # https://github.com/scikit-image/scikit-image/issues/2889
          # https://github.com/scikit-image/scikit-image/pull/3126
          img = skimage_io.imread(file, as_gray=self.as_gray, plugin='imageio')
          if img is not None and len(img.shape) != 2:
              # The PIL plugin somewhy fails to load some images
              img = skimage_io.imread(file, as_gray=self.as_gray, plugin='matplotlib')
          return img
docs: Proxy to skimage.io.imread with some fixes.