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Info no. 02
Virtual Microscopy and Digital Pathology at the University Magdeburg:
"New technology makes microscope obsolete"
This is a translation of an article that appeared in German in the journal “Universitaetsklinikum Magdeburg aktuell”, April 2006. We thank the authors for the permission to reproduce it. According to Prof. Roessner, these virtual courses also led to clearly better results for the students in the histopathological exams. The quality of the specimen display on the PC screens is, as everyone can easily see, in every respect much better than the course microscopes, and is comparable to the quality of high-end microscopes used in the professional realm. Thus, virtual microscopy is now proving to be very beneficial to the teaching at the Medical Faculty and is still unique in Germany. It is planned that the histopathological practical courses in future will not be held in the microscopy room, but in the PC termiA collection of standard slides to be scanned nal room. This “e-learning” will be further developed together with other institutes and hospitals. The students will have access to the electronic media not only during the course sessions but at anytime. The Institute of Pathology is also working on a “virtual textbook” of histopathology. In addition to the virtual microscope, this will offer the students complete information on the corresponding disease phenomenology for their own study. In the long term, it is planned to add links to the diagnoses and “e-learning” content of participating hospitals and institutes, allowing practical and problem-oriented learning. The reputation of the faculty in Magdeburg as one of the most attractive and successful in student education, as evidenced by the above-average examination results of the students in federal comparisons, will be further consolidated. Already now students speak of the “Harvard of East Germany”.
Pathologists and students have become enthusiastic about a new technology: a “virtual microscope” that has been installed recently at the Medical Faculty of the Otto-Guericke University in Magdeburg. This is a slide scanning system that can digitize conventional microscope slides with a resolution of 0.23 microns to create digital image files, which can be displayed on a computer screen. Advances in computer hardware and software technology are now making it possible to handle image files even as large as these. “Depending on the area of the histological specimen the image data file can be larger than one gigabyte per specimen, but this can be reduced by suitable compression methods”, explains Dr Thomas Kalinski of the Institute for Pathology. One target of Institute's director Prof. A. Roessner (left) and Dr. Th. Kalinski research work at the Institute of Pathology in co-operation with the Institute for Medical Informatics and Biometry and the Medical Computing Center, is the definition of suitable parameters to establish a common data format for virtual specimens. Apart from future research applications the new technology is already being used now for non-research activities. “We see applications for virtual microscopy not only in diagnostics and research but also in teaching”, says the institute's director, Prof Albert Roessner. Already in this semester, in addition to the courses in general and special pathology using conventional microscopes, virtual histopathological practical courses are offered to the students. “All samples that are used in the courses are available and can be accessed via the intranet of the Medical Faculty”, says Dr Kalinski. So, independent of any microscopes, the samples can be accessed with service PCs on the whole campus or with private laptops via WLAN in the Medical Central Library. Students at a virtual microcope workplace “Particularly in the period prior to examinations this service is very popular among the students and became the most intensely used electronic media of the Central Medical Library”, Dr Kalinski remarks with a smile.
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Digital slide image viewed at three different magnifications (corresponding to naked-eye view and 50x and 200x conventional microscope view)
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