Older technologies allowed for digital images of one field of view to be stored. However, multiple fields of view were too cumbersome to be useful, taking up hundreds of megabytes, said Glaser, in explaining the advantages of the new technology. The Virtual Slice allows hundreds, even thousands, of merged fields to be stored on a central server, and streamed to the viewer over the Internet. In addition, users comments and questions can be linked to locations on the slide, making the virtual slide a truly interactive teaching tool, Glaser added. Supported by a grant from the National Library of Medicine, Dick along with educational designer Tim Leaven, and anatomy professor Dr. Paul Heidger, were the first to adapt and evaluate MBF s virtual slides for use in courses.
Students can work from the comfort of their own home and on their own schedule.
With a local intranet, students can access digitized slides from any computer on campus, while the Internet allows students to access slides from anywhere in the world. Faculty can also prepare lecture presentations using virtual slides downloaded from the Internet or intranet. It has the potential to revolutionize the way we visualize and distribute microscopic slides and images.