Patent ID: RE42220

Claim:
A method of telemicroscopy comprising the steps of: preparing a complete specimen on a microscopy slide, the complete specimen occupying an area of the microscopy slide; placing the slide upon the stage of a microscope equipped with a high power objective lens, digital imaging apparatus and motorized stage; imaging said area of the microscopy slide using the high power objective lens to obtain a single scan of the complete specimen at high magnification and high resolution to provide data for a high resolution image of every portion , of the specimen; wherein the step of imaging comprises obtaining a continuos continuous sequence of successive images by advancing the field of view of the high power objective lens of the microscope stepwise across the complete specimen and acquiring successive images of each field of view for the complete specimen; digitally processing the high resolution image data to obtain data for a relatively low resolution copy of the composite image of the complete specimen; and storing the high resolution image data and the low resolution copy of the image data in a datastore; wherein the method further comprises the steps of transferring the low resolution copy of the image data from the datastore to a remote terminal for displaying a corresponding low resolution image, as a navigation map, upon a monitor of the terminal; and in response to a selection, by a user of the terminal, of an area of the navigation map, transferring corresponding high resolution image data for the selected area of the image from the datastore to the terminal.