Soft Imaging System's .slide for Digital Virtual Microscopy
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Soft Imaging System, in conjunction with Olympus, has developed a microscopy system - .slide.
In contrast to conventional digital microscopy, it offers creation of virtual images at diagnostic-level resolution, for the entire slide. These virtual slides can be accessed from any location around the world via the internet.
While digitisation in microscopy has made enormous advances over the years, it has run into some difficulties of late.
One problem was not being able to capture an image area at multiple magnification levels. This meant that an overview of the entire slide with detailed views at high resolution was simply not possible.
.slide however, eliminates these restrictions. The scanning of entire slides is now possible - including the microscopic specimen at a level of magnification defined by the user.
A virtual slide is thereby created that can be displayed on a monitor in perfect quality and archived in an online database if necessary.
As when using a genuine glass slide, sections can be enlarged or reduced – by anyone with authorised access at any location in the world.
It is even possible to mark points of particular interest or significance for direct recall. Comprehensive functions for labeling these sections or appending audio notes to marked positions make it easy to include detailed information.
Individual components forming a system .slide is based on an entire system of individual components (microscope, motorised stage, PC, software) that interact optimally.
The software is the core of the system. It regulates the acquisition procedure, enables numerous processing routines as well as ensuring flawless visualisation and allocation of images to web-based galleries.
When selecting the hardware, particular emphasis was placed on speed, flexibility, automation, configurability, ease of use and optimal expandability.
The system is used with an Olympus BX51 microscope, known for its optical performance and optimal resolution. Numerous motorised components and the modular and ergonomic design ensure maximum efficiency.
The integrated digital colour camera offers high resolution, rapid frame rates and a signal-to-noise ratio.
Equipped with dual Xeon processors, the integrated PC features 4GB RAM as well as a 128MB graphics card enabling fast sample visualisation.
Similarly, the .slide motorised stage ensures best performance with its PCI DSP stage controller card.
All motorised components of the microscope as well as the motorised stage and camera are controlled via an intuitive user interface.
