Patent ID: 8582849

Claim:
A system for viewing a digital image of an area of a microscope slide (“digital slide image”), comprising: a data storage area comprising a plurality of stored digital slide images, wherein a stored digital slide image includes: a plurality of baseline images, each baseline image comprising an image of the entire specimen on the microscope slide at a different Z layer, each baseline image having a baseline image resolution, wherein said baseline image resolution is substantially equal to the resolution as received from a scanner device; a plurality of thumbnail images, each thumbnail image comprising an image of the complete baseline image at the corresponding baseline Z layer, each thumbnail image having a thumbnail image resolution, wherein said thumbnail image resolution is lower than the baseline image resolution; a plurality of first intermediate level images, each first intermediate level image comprising an image of the complete baseline image at the corresponding baseline Z layer, each first intermediate level image having a first intermediate image resolution, wherein said first intermediate image resolution is lower than the baseline image resolution and higher than the thumbnail image resolution; and a Z axis offset for each baseline Z layer; a connection module configured to receive a request that identifies a requested stored digital slide image and a desired resolution for the requested stored digital slide image and determine that the desired resolution for the requested stored digital slide image is not the resolution of one of said plurality of complete images at a different resolution in the requested stored digital slide image; and a virtual slide module configured to obtain image data from the requested stored digital slide image, scale the image data to the desired resolution, and send the scaled digital slide image data in response to the request.