Abstract
In virtual microscopy, a sequential process of captures of microscopical fields, allows to construct a virtual slide which is visualized using a specialized software, called the virtual microscopy viewer. This tool allows useful exploration of images, composed of thousands of microscopical fields of view at different levels of magnification, emulating an actual microscopical examination. The aim of this study was to establish the main pathologist's navigation patterns when exploring virtual microscopy slides, using a graphical user interface, adapted to the pathologist's workflow. Four pathologists with a similar level of experience, graduated from the same pathology program, navigated six virtual slides. Different issues were evaluated, namely, the percentage of common visited image regions, the time spent at each and its coincidence level, that is to say, the region of interest location. In addition, navigation patterns were also assessed, i.e., mouse movement velocities and linearity of the diagnostic paths. Results suggest that regions of interest are determined by a complex combination of the visited area, the time spent at each visit and the coincidence level among pathologists. Additionally, linear trajectories and particular velocity patterns were found for the registered diagnostic paths.
Highlights
A very recent field, known as virtual microscopy, has made possible digital exploration of histological slides, archiving of these slides for later analysis and easy access to this information
Regions of Interests As previously discussed, we suppose that ROIs are defined by a combination of the three criteria presented hereafter: Percentage of visited area The percentage of visited area by at least one pathologist was computed for each of the virtual slides (Table 1)
These values varied between 44% and 91% with an average of 66%, indicating that the amount of explored tissue is highly dependent on the image contents, that is to say, some virtual slides were little-explored because relevant information was available
Summary
A very recent field, known as virtual microscopy, has made possible digital exploration of histological slides, archiving of these slides for later analysis and easy access to this information. A slide digitization is called a virtual slide (VS) and is constructed from sequential captures of microscopical fields [1]. These virtual slides are high resolution images whose visualization requires a specialized software, called the virtual microscopy viewer, a specific tool devised for running over images composed of thousands of microscopical fields of view. A definitive diagnosis is achieved by following a standard methodology with two coarse phases: first examination is carried out at the lower magnification (panoramic) in order to locate relevant information in terms of a spatial organization of the histological
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