Patent ID: 7216081

Claim:
A digital system for assisting the microscopic screening of cytology slides by a user, said system comprising: (a) a microphone adapted to receive voice input to be spoken by said user; (b) a speaker adapted to transmit voice output to be heard by said user; (c) a digital processor having an electronic database, a voice recognition unit, and a voice synthesizing unit; (d) said electronic database containing a plurality of patient cases in the form of electronic case representations identified by case numbers, a library of specimen comments related to cytology in the form of electronic specimen representations corresponding to digital text on deposit in said electronic database, and a library of diagnosis phrases related to cytology in the form of electronic diagnosis representations corresponding to digital text on deposit in said electronic database, (e) said voice recognition unit being operatively connected to said digital processor to convert speech received from said microphone to digital text on deposit in said electronic database; (f) said voice synthesizing unit being operatively connected to said digital processor to generate speech transmitted from said speaker to said user on the basis of said electronic specimen representations and said electronic diagnosis representations; and (g) a printer for combining a selected one of said case numbers with selected ones of said electronic specimen representations and said diagnosis representations to provide a cytology report.