Using a high-resolution wall-sized virtual microscope to teach undergraduate medical students

Abstract

The Leeds Virtual Microscope is an interactive visualization system, capable of rendering gigapixel virtual slides onto high-resolution, wall-sized displays. We describe the evaluation of this technology for teaching pathology to undergraduate medical students, providing insights into the use of high-resolution, wallsized displays in an educational context. Students were quickly able to become confident in using the technology, collaboratively exploring virtual slides in order to understand the mechanisms of disease. Being able to point with a finger to features on virtual slides promoted multi-way interaction between the students and tutor, led to the spontaneous expansion of the tutorial's scope, and was indicative of a high level of engagement. Students were very positive about being able to interact with the virtual slides and described their increased enthusiasm for pathology as a subject.

Leveraging wall-sized high-resolution displays for comparative genomics analyses of copy number variation

“…For collaborative data analysis a WHirD's physical size accommodates the space required by a group of people. This allows small groups of users to work more productively than when crowded around a desktop display [23] and promotes the engagement of everyone who is involved [24].…”

“…We investigated this type of usage by loading graphical output from CNAnorm ( §3.2.1) and Circos ( §3.2.2) into the Leeds Virtual Microscope (LVM) [19,24], which allows images to be panned and zoomed interactively on WHirDs using a gamepad interface. The LVM is primarily used visualize histopathology images (100,000×100,000 pixels, or larger), and has been tested successfully with 1 trillion pixel composite images.…”

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

“…The virtual microscope avoids the problem of maintaining a satisfactory assortment of glass slides, which are easy to break (Goldberg & Dintzis, 2007). 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).…”

How Tablet Technology Is Going to Change Cooperative Diagnosis in the Cytology e-Laboratory

“…igital cytology is a field of digital pathology 1,2 that, through the integration of suitably designed information and communications technologies and medical knowledge, allows the investigation of cellular morphological alterations directly in a digital image called a virtual slide or e-slide [2][3][4] in a cytology e-laboratory. The e-slides are the product of a digitalization workflow produced by means of a heterogeneous process through the use of dedicated scanners starting from a standard microscope slide.…”

“…Assessment of the introduction of tablet technologies in teleconsulting and e-learning applications will be the focus of future study. 3,4 We trust that stakeholders will focus on this field in order to translate these research experiences into routine and practice.…”