A Web-Based Solution for Viewing Large-Sized Microscopic Images

Abstract

This paper demonstrates a pure web-based solution enabling the presentation of scanned pathologic microscopic images on the web. For each slide, an entire specimen is scanned, and a high-resolution digital image (in the order of giga-pixels) is reconstructed. These huge images are then tiled into many 256×256-pixel blocks with different resolutions, and information about the blocks of each scanned slide is included in an extensible markup language metafile. Based on the data, a virtual microscopy system is created for viewing the scanned pathologic slides on web. The functionalities (changing viewing resolution, location adjustment, and multimedia annotation presentation) of our virtual slide viewing system are accomplished using pure hypertext markup language (HTML) and JavaScript. We show that there is no need to add plug-in components to browsers in order to handle virtual slides on the web. In a heterogeneous healthcare environment, methods using pure HTML and JavaScript to deal with pathologic content are more appropriate than using proprietary technologies supported only by specific browsers.

Use of a Rich Internet Application Solution to Present Medical Images

“…As demonstrated in this paper, RIA solutions can implement most of the imageviewing functionalities as using conventional DICOM viewing systems. In addition, Web technologies are more appropriate than the conventional DICOM viewing systems for handling very large microscopy images [18]. The only drawback of Web architecture for handling medical images is that the image processing and reconstruction must be accomplished on Web servers.…”

“…There are currently commercial products that can scan and digitize microscope specimens at resolutions that are equivalent to those achievable using an optical microscope. This therefore constitutes a virtual slide-viewing system that is similar to conventional optical microscopy in that it allows adjustment of resolution and free navigation of any portion of the specimen, similar to the well-established map navigation available on the Web [16][17][18].…”

“…The developed virtual slide system is more powerful than conventional microscopy; for example, it provides dynamically added annotations on the viewing images. We refer the reader to our previous paper for details regarding handling and presenting huge microscopy images on the Web [18].…”

Medical high-resolution image sharing and electronic whiteboard system: A pure-web-based system for accessing and discussing lossless original images in telemedicine

“…This way may get a risk of losing important information [12,13], or catch a complex process that client needs to be customized for special decoding and reconstruction software. (3) Using new network interactive technologies to change the whole transmission into on-demand transmission [13][14][15][16][17][18]. For example, [13][14][15][16] used JPEG2000, which has been included in DICOM supplement [22] and has very good network transmission characteristics, including Region of Interest (ROI), progressivity and scalability.…”

Model for an Online, Virtual Medical Textbook Generated from HTML-Coded Links to Virtual Microscopic Slides

“…[1][2][3][4] We describe a simple method for creation of an online, medical-pathology textbook using virtual pathology slides with deep hyperlinking of images from HTML-coded Web pages to specific areas of scanned slides using the Aperio virtual slide-server system (www.aperio.com; accessed April 16, 2012; Aperio, Vista, California); the virtual slides are hosted on a remote server (www.virtualpathology.leeds. ac.uk; accessed April 16, 2012).…”