Abstract
BackgroundThe spreading of whole slide imaging or digital slide systems in pathology as an innovative technique seems to be unstoppable. Successful introduction of digital slides in education has played a crucial role to reach this level of acceptance. Practically speaking there is no university institute where digital materials are not built into pathology education. At the 1st. Department of Pathology and Experimental Cancer Research, Semmelweis University optical microscopes have been replaced and for four years only digital slides have been used in education. The aim of this paper is to summarize our experiences gathered with the installation of a fully digitized histology lab for graduate education.MethodsWe have installed a digital histology lab with 40 PCs, two slide servers - one for internal use and one with external internet access. We have digitized hundreds of slides and after 4 years we use a set of 126 slides during the pathology course. A Student satisfaction questionnaire and a Tutor satisfaction questionnaire have been designed, both to be completed voluntarily to have feed back from the users. The page load statistics of the external slide server were evaluated.ResultsThe digital histology lab served ~900 students and ~1600 hours of histology practice. The questionnaires revealed high satisfaction with digital slides. The results also emphasize the importance of the tutors' attitude towards digital microscopy as a factor influencing the students' satisfaction. The constantly growing number of page downloads from the external server confirms this satisfaction and the acceptance of digital slides.ConclusionsWe are confident, and have showed as well, that digital slides have got numerous advantages over optical slides and are more suitable in education.
Highlights
The spreading of whole slide imaging or digital slide systems in pathology as an innovative technique seems to be unstoppable
Key hardwares and softwares used After a testing period lasted for almost a year, including software tests and pilot histology practices, we decided to replace all optical microscopes by computers for the 2007 academic year
Considering the fact that the most obvious advantages of such systems appear in education it is not surprising that spreading of digital microscopes have started in the histopathology classrooms [13]
Summary
The spreading of whole slide imaging or digital slide systems in pathology as an innovative technique seems to be unstoppable. Pathology is a discipline dealing with the development of diseases, their aetiology and effects on the human body, being closely correlated to prevention, diagnosis and therapy. It is one of the most important medical disciplines, connecting morphological changes to clinical aspects, the study and knowledge of pathology is essential for the understanding of clinical subjects. For the third question the spreading of digital microscopes in all fields of pathology [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] especially in the histopathology classrooms Worldwide may provide a suitable answer [9,10,11,12]
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