Submitted to the 1997 American Medical Informatics Association Conference
The Virtual Microscope is a software system designed to provide a realistic digital emulation of a high power light microscope. The raw data for such a system can be captured by digitally scanning collections of full microscope slides under high power. While the hardware for performing the data capture more effectively is rapidly becoming commercially available, the software support required to provide interactive response times for the standard behavior of a physical microscope has not been developed. These behaviors include continuously moving the stage and changing magnification and focus. In addition, a software solution can enable new modes of behavior that cannot be achieved with a physical microscope, such as simultaneous viewing and manipulation of one slide by multiple users. This paper describes the design of a complete software system for implementing the functionality of the Virtual Microscope, through a client/server architecture. The client software runs on a user's PC or workstation, while the database software for storing, retrieving and processing the microscope image data runs on a high performance parallel computer at a potentially remote site.