System and method for viewing virtual slides

• US 20040167806A1
• Filed: 02/26/2004
• Published: 08/26/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 05/03/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Leica Biosystems Imaging Inc. (Danaher Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Aperio Technologies Incorporated (Danaher Corporation)
• Inventors: Eichhorn, Ole, Brumme, Anne
• Granted Patent: US 7,738,688 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/3
• CPC Class Codes: G02B 21/26 Stages; Adjusting means therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G02B 21/32 Micromanipulators structurally combined with microscopes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/1454 involving copying of the display data of a local workstation or window to a remote workstation or window so that an actual copy of the data is displayed simultaneously on two or more displays, e.g. teledisplay
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/40 for processing medical images, e.g. editing
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 80/00 ICT specially adapted for facilitating communication between medical practitioners or patients, e.g. for collaborative diagnosis, therapy or health monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/403 Arrangements for multi-party communication, e.g. for conferences data switching systems for conference H04L12/18; arrangements for connecting several subscribers to a common circuit, i.e. affording conference facilities H04M3/56; television conferencing systems H04N7/15

Abstract

Virtual slide image data and corresponding information are stored in a data storage area on a virtual slide image server. A client viewer requests image data at a particular resolution. The image server obtains corresponding image data from the data storage area at a resolution nearest to the requested resolution. The image data is then sent to the client viewer. The client viewer receives the image data and scales the image data to the requested resolution prior to displaying the image data.

Claims

1. A server system for viewing virtual microscope slides, comprising:

a data storage area comprising virtual slide image files, authentication information, and annotation data;

a connection module configured to receive a virtual slide request, identify the type of request, route the request for processing and provide a response; and

a virtual slide module configured to receive a virtual slide request, fetch virtual slide data from the data storage area and provide virtual slide data in response.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the virtual slide request comprises user authentication information, and wherein the connection module is configured to access the authentication information in the data storage area to validate the user authentication information in the virtual slide request.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the virtual slide request comprises a request for virtual slide image data.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the virtual slide request comprises a request for information related to a virtual slide.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising an annotation module configured to receive annotation data from the connection module and store annotation data in the data storage area

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the virtual slide request comprises a request for annotation data.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the virtual slide module further comprises:

a cache configured to temporarily store virtual slide data from the data storage area; and

a codec configured to compress and decompress virtual slide image data.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the cache further comprises:

a block cache configured to store a discrete portion of a recently viewed virtual slide image, wherein the discrete portion is in substantially the same format as the corresponding virtual slide image portion in the data storage area;

a file information cache configured to store recently accessed virtual slide information;

a sub-region cache configured to store a discrete sub-region of a recently viewed virtual slide image, wherein the sub-region cache is communicatively coupled with the codec.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the discrete sub-region has been converted to a format different from the format of the virtual slide image in the data storage area.

10. The system of claim 7, wherein the cache further comprises an authentication cache configured to store information related to recently authenticated users.

11. The system of claim 1, further comprising a client viewer communicatively coupled with the server system via a communication link.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the communication link is a direct cable connection.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein the communication link is a network connection.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein the client viewer comprises:

a viewport control configured to receive virtual slide image data and related virtual slide information and process the image data and information for viewing; and

a graphical user interface configured to display the virtual slide image data and related virtual slide information.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the viewport control further comprises a render engine configured to receive image data, maintain image data in cache, and provide image data to the graphical user interface for display.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the render engine further comprises an image scaling module configured to scale virtual slide image data to a desired resolution.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the render engine further comprises an image transform module configured to rotate virtual slide image data in an orthogonal direction.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the render engine further comprises an image filtering module configured to filter virtual slide image data.

19. The system of claim 15, wherein the render engine further comprises an image gamma adjuster configured to modify color values of displayed pixels corresponding to virtual slide image data.

20. The system of claim 11, further comprising a codec configured to decompress blocks of virtual slide image data received from the server system.

21. The system of claim 1, further comprising a web server communicatively coupled with the server system and a requesting browser, the web server configured to receive a virtual slide request from the requesting browser, send the request to the server system, receive a corresponding response from the server system and provide the corresponding response to the requesting browser.

22. A system for simultaneous viewing of virtual slides, comprising:

a virtual microscopy conferencing server;

a leader client viewer; and

a participant client viewer, wherein the leader client viewer issues virtual slide viewing commands to the virtual microscopy conferencing server and the server provides responsive virtual slide data to the leader client viewer and the participant client viewer.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein the virtual microscopy conferencing server further comprises a virtual microscopy conferencing session manager configured to receive and process the virtual slide viewing commands.

24. The system of claim 23, wherein the virtual microscopy conferencing server further comprises a virtual microscopy conferencing session table comprising a plurality of entries, wherein a first session table entry is associated with the leader client viewer and a second session table entry is associated with the participant client viewer.

25. The system of claim 24, wherein a session table entry includes the current viewing status for its corresponding client viewer.

26. A method for viewing virtual slide image data, comprising:

scanning a microscope slide at a plurality of focus levels;

creating a discrete virtual slide image for each corresponding focus level;

combining the plurality of virtual slide images for each of the plurality of focus levels into a three-dimensional virtual slide image;

receiving a virtual slide image request comprising a desired focus level, and a desired resolution;

identifying a first virtual slide image and a second virtual slide image, wherein the desired focus level is between the focus level of the first virtual slide image and the focus level of the second virtual slide image;

scaling the resolution of the first virtual slide image to the desired resolution;

scaling the resolution of the second virtual slide image to the desired resolution;

interpolating a responsive virtual slide image from the scaled first virtual slide image and the scaled second virtual slide image; and

providing the responsive virtual slide image at the desired focus level and the desired resolution.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein the virtual slide image request further comprises a desired location and wherein the identifying step further comprises identifying a portion of the first virtual slide image and a portion of the second virtual slide image, wherein the desired location is within each portion.

28. The method of claim 26, further comprising skewing the responsive virtual slide image.

29. The method of claim 28, wherein the skewing step further comprises:

shifting image pixels in the scaled first virtual slide image in a first direction; and

shifting image pixels in the scaled second virtual slide image in a second direction, wherein the second direction is opposite the first direction.

30. A virtual slide image file structure, comprising:

a baseline image having a resolution substantially equal to the resolution at which the virtual slide image was captured;

a thumbnail image, wherein the thumbnail image is an image of the complete baseline image and has a lower resolution than the baseline image; and

an intermediate level image, wherein the intermediate level image is a scaled version of the complete baseline image and has a lower resolution than the baseline image and higher resolution than the thumbnail image.

31. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 30, wherein the baseline image further comprises a plurality of data blocks.

32. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 31, wherein each data block is compressed.

33. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 32, wherein each data block is compressed using JPEG2000.

34. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 31, wherein each data block comprises a checksum to validate image integrity.

35. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 31, wherein each data block comprises a post compression image fidelity measurement.

36. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 35, wherein the image fidelity measurement is computed as average root mean square distance from the original image data.

37. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 35, wherein the image fidelity measurement is computed as average root mean cube distance from the original image data.

38. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 30, wherein the thumbnail image is compressed using JPEG 2000.

39. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 30, wherein the thumbnail image has a width of up to 512 pixels and a height of up to 512 pixels.

40. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 30, further comprising a plurality of intermediate level images.

41. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 40, wherein each intermediate level image further comprises a plurality of data blocks.

42. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 41, wherein each data block is compressed.

43. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 42, wherein each data block is compressed using JPEG2000.

44. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 41, wherein each data block comprises a checksum to validate image integrity.

45. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 41, wherein each data block comprises a post compression image fidelity measurement.

46. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 45, wherein the image fidelity measurement is computed as average root mean square distance from the original image data.

47. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 45, wherein the image fidelity measurement is computed as average root mean cube distance from the original image data.

48. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 41, wherein the virtual slide image file is stored using the tagged image file format standard.