RecutClub.com: An Open Source, Whole Slide Image-based Pathology Education System

Abstract

Background:Our institution's pathology unknown conferences provide educational cases for our residents. However, the cases have not been previously available digitally, have not been collated for postconference review, and were not accessible to a wider audience. Our objective was to create an inexpensive whole slide image (WSI) education suite to address these limitations and improve the education of pathology trainees.Materials and Methods:We surveyed residents regarding their preference between four unique WSI systems. We then scanned weekly unknown conference cases and study set cases and uploaded them to our custom built WSI viewer located at RecutClub.com. We measured site utilization and conference participation.Results:Residents preferred our OpenLayers WSI implementation to Ventana Virtuoso, Google Maps API, and OpenSlide. Over 16 months, we uploaded 1366 cases from 77 conferences and ten study sets, occupying 793.5 GB of cloud storage. Based on resident evaluations, the interface was easy to use and demonstrated minimal latency. Residents are able to review cases from home and from their mobile devices. Worldwide, 955 unique IP addresses from 52 countries have viewed cases in our site.Conclusions:We implemented a low-cost, publicly available repository of WSI slides for resident education. Our trainees are very satisfied with the freedom to preview either the glass slides or WSI and review the WSI postconference. Both local users and worldwide users actively and repeatedly view cases in our study set.

The Handbook of Medical Image Perception and Techniques

“…In many medical school and pathology residency programs (Christensen et al, 2017;Wilbur, 2016), students are no longer required to purchase a microscope and box of glass specimen slides. They are simply purchasing a CD with directories of virtual slides to view as soft-copy images and learn from.…”

A Taxonomic Index for Retrieval of Digitized Whole Slide Images from an Electronic Database for Medical School and Pathology Residency Education

“…Since the advent of whole slide imaging (WSI), the utility of digitized slides for education in medical school and residency has been amply documented. Entire histology and histopathology databases exist on digital platforms,[123] “unknown” slides are routinely made available to residents for review prior to conferences,[1] many major academic medical centers have made thematic slide collections digitally available for medical student[456] and resident[789] education, and continuing medical education seminars in pathology are frequently hosted on digital platforms. These applications have enhanced the educational value of histologic and pathologic slides by affording use that is unrestricted in time or place and by preventing loss of educational slide sets through breakage, misplacement, and theft.…”