Comparison of a virtual microscope laboratory to a regular microscope laboratory for teaching histology

Abstract

Emerging technology now exists to digitize a gigabyte of information from a glass slide, save it in a highly compressed file format, and deliver it over the web. By accessing these images with a standard web browser and viewer plug-in, a computer can emulate a real microscope and glass slide. Using this new technology, the immediate aims of our project were to digitize the glass slides from urinary tract, male genital, and endocrine units and implement them in the Spring 2000 Histology course at the University of Iowa, and to carry out a formative evaluation of the virtual slides of these three units in a side-by-side comparison with the regular microscope laboratory. The methods and results of this paper will describe the technology employed to create the virtual slides, and the formative evaluation carried out in the course. Anat Rec (New Anat) 265:10 -14, 2001.

Teaching medical histology at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine: Transition to virtual slides and virtual microscopes

“…The images were placed originally on videodiscs and subsequently on CD-ROMs (Downing, 1995, and personal communication). Virtual slides and virtual microscopes have been integrated successfully into the laboratories in histology along with microscope glass slides and light microscopes at the University of Iowa (Harris et al, 2001;Heidger et al, 2002). To our knowledge, ours is the first report of a successful complete transition from the use of microscope glass slides and microscopes to the combined use of static labeled images and virtual slides and virtual microscopes for the teaching of laboratory sessions in medical histology courses in North America.…”

“…A study was conducted at the University of Iowa in the spring of 2000 to assess the potential effectiveness of using virtual slides on the Web in their medical histology course (Harris et al, 2001). A total of 19 virtual slides were made from microscope glass slides in the endocrine, urinary tract, and male genital tract units in student collections.…”

Results of the implementation of a virtual microscope in a course of histology

“…Other advantages cited are that the virtual microscope is easy to learn, and students and professors adapt very quickly to the use of the virtual microscope (Kumar et al, 2004). Respect to the higher resolution, the slides provides excellent image quality (Kumar et al, 2004) in part thanks to the improvement of the streaming (Afework et al, 1998) Virtual slides are always focused and with an adequate level of light adjustment (Harris et al, 2001). Also the exploration of the sample is much better in the virtual microscope: virtual slides enhance the ability of the students to grasp and explore morphological features better than optical microscope (Dee et al, 2003).…”

“…In addition, the virtual microscope allows the group study being able to point with a finger to features on virtual slides, allowing interaction tutor-student or between students (Randell et al, 2012) and allowing to focus on the links between histology, physiology, and pathology (Goldberg & Dintzis, 2007). It has been studied that the use of virtual microscope reduce the learning time: students learn more quickly (Harris et al, 2001) and the time required for a concrete lesson can be reduced to a half (Heidger et al, 2002). The average marks of the practical exams also increase (Goldberg & Dintzis, 2007).…”

“…The average marks of the practical exams also increase (Goldberg & Dintzis, 2007). Other of the advantages is that the virtual microscope is always available: students can review the samples at any time, not only when the microscopy laboratory is open (Goldberg & Dintzis, 2007) This is useful especially preceding practical examinations (Harris et al, 2001). Also, the students can use additional features of the new media, such to share the findings of the slide to the community or in social networks (Rehatschek & Hye, 2011).…”