Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2012;7(1):e30783. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0030783. Epub 2012 Jan 23.
Digital pathology provides a digital environment for the management and interpretation of pathological images and associated data. It is becoming increasing popular to use modern computer based tools and applications in pathological education, tissue based research and clinical diagnosis. Uptake of this new technology is stymied by its single user orientation and its prerequisite and cumbersome combination of mouse and keyboard for navigation and annotation.
In this study we developed SurfaceSlide, a dedicated viewing platform which enables the navigation and annotation of gigapixel digitised pathological images using fingertip touch. SurfaceSlide was developed using the Microsoft Surface, a 30 inch multitouch tabletop computing platform. SurfaceSlide users can perform direct panning and zooming operations on digitised slide images. These images are downloaded onto the Microsoft Surface platform from a remote server on-demand. Users can also draw annotations and key in texts using an on-screen virtual keyboard. We also developed a smart caching protocol which caches the surrounding regions of a field of view in multi-resolutions thus providing a smooth and vivid user experience and reducing the delay for image downloading from the internet. We compared the usability of SurfaceSlide against Aperio ImageScope and PathXL online viewer.
SurfaceSlide is intuitive, fast and easy to use. SurfaceSlide represents the most direct, effective and intimate human-digital slide interaction experience. It is expected that SurfaceSlide will significantly enhance digital pathology tools and applications in education and clinical practice.
数字病理学为病理图像及相关数据的管理和解释提供了数字化环境。在病理教学、组织研究和临床诊断中,使用现代基于计算机的工具和应用程序正变得越来越流行。由于其单一用户导向以及鼠标和键盘导航和注释的前提条件和繁琐组合,这项新技术的采用受到阻碍。
在这项研究中,我们开发了 SurfaceSlide,这是一个专用的查看平台,它使用指尖触摸来实现千兆像素数字化病理图像的导航和注释。SurfaceSlide 是使用 Microsoft Surface 开发的,这是一个 30 英寸的多点触控桌面计算平台。SurfaceSlide 用户可以对数字化幻灯片图像执行直接平移和缩放操作。这些图像可以从远程服务器按需下载到 Microsoft Surface 平台上。用户还可以使用屏幕上的虚拟键盘进行注释和输入文本。我们还开发了一种智能缓存协议,该协议以多分辨率缓存视场的周围区域,从而提供流畅生动的用户体验并减少从互联网下载图像的延迟。我们比较了 SurfaceSlide 与 Aperio ImageScope 和 PathXL 在线查看器的可用性。
SurfaceSlide 直观、快速且易于使用。SurfaceSlide 代表了最直接、最有效和最亲密的人机数字幻灯片交互体验。预计 SurfaceSlide 将极大地增强教育和临床实践中的数字病理学工具和应用。