Digital Histology Interest Group or DHIG

As many of you know, I've been talking for several years about building a virtual-microscope that can display multifocal-plane virtual slides (i.e., you can focus up-and-down).  This past year, I actually got around to building the prototype.  I had planned on "rolling it out" at the EB 2020 meeting, but ... .

The viewer for the new virtual microscope is now available at http://viewer.pnwu.edu.  This is very much a work-in-progress; there is a long "to do" list and the microscope is far from being a 'finished' product.  There also are some known computer bugs and undoubtedly many more bugs waiting to be found.  You can help by taking the microscope out for a trial-run, and then letting me know what doesn't work (Michael Hortsch already has provided some very valuable feedback).  Besides being publicly available on the PNWU website, the microscope also is open-source (available on GitHub under a GNU GPL3 license); the server-side software is minimal so it would not be difficult to set-up the virtual microscope on your institution's server if you don't want to use the copy on PNWU's server.

Eventually, there will be a full-fledged User Manual for the virtual microscope, but it isn't finished yet (I'd like to blame corona virus, but computer bugs and my inefficiency are to blame).  When it's written, the User Manual will be accessible (as a PDF) from the viewer's "About" menu.  For now, there are very abbreviated instructions under "About" => "Using a computer mouse ..." and "About" => "Using a touchscreen ...".  Please note that for a touchscreen device, you need to USE TWO FINGERS TO MOVE THE SLIDE.

When using the microscope for teaching histology lab, I want to provide the students with direct links to specific slides (so they don't have to hassle with "choosing" the correct slide).  To do this, all you need to do is add a "?" and the slide number after "viewer.pnwu.edu" in the URL, e.g.:  http://viewer.pnwu.edu?slide=3005 (in this case, the "Choose a Slide" box and "Back to Slide List" menu option are suppressed).  You also can supply x,y coordinates, zoom-level, and focal-plane in the URL (e.g., http://viewer.pnwu.edu/?slide=3003&z=8&x=97900&y=93300 (try clicking on "Cycle through focal planes" on Navigator), or. http://viewer.pnwu.edu/?slide=3001&z=8&f=8&x=34100&y=31170 (note the lymphcyte undergoing diapedesis)).

If you're interested, the poster that I would have presented at the EB meeting is at: http://viewer.pnwu.edu/docs/poster_EB2020.pdf

When the Health Department gives the OK to unlock the University, I'll be asking to borrow glass slides to scan.  In the meantime, stay healthy.

                - - Jim




------------------------------
James Rhodes
Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences
Yakima WA
509-249-7738
------------------------------

Amazing innovation!  Thanks for sharing, Jim and so good to see you today!

------------------------------
Lisa Lee
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Aurora CO
303-724-7460
------------------------------