Viewing digital slides

• US 8,582,849 B2
• Filed: 07/15/2011
• Issued: 11/12/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 05/03/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Leica Biosystems Imaging Inc. (Danaher Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Leica Biosystems Imaging Inc. (Danaher Corporation)
• Inventors: Eichhorn, Ole, Brumme, Anne
• Primary Examiner(s): Lu, Tom Y
• Application Number:
  US13/184,362
• Publication Number:
  US 20120002892A1
• Time in Patent Office: 851 Days
• Field of Search: 382/128, 382/133, 382/240
• US Class Current: 382/128
• 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 system for viewing a digital image of an area of a microscope slide (“

digital slide image”

), comprising;

a data storage area comprising a plurality of stored digital slide images, wherein a stored digital slide image includes;

a plurality of baseline images, each baseline image comprising an image of the entire specimen on the microscope slide at a different Z layer, each baseline image having a baseline image resolution, wherein said baseline image resolution is substantially equal to the resolution as received from a scanner device;

a plurality of thumbnail images, each thumbnail image comprising an image of the complete baseline image at the corresponding baseline Z layer, each thumbnail image having a thumbnail image resolution, wherein said thumbnail image resolution is lower than the baseline image resolution;

a plurality of first intermediate level images, each first intermediate level image comprising an image of the complete baseline image at the corresponding baseline Z layer, each first intermediate level image having a first intermediate image resolution, wherein said first intermediate image resolution is lower than the baseline image resolution and higher than the thumbnail image resolution; and

a Z axis offset for each baseline Z layer;

a connection module configured to receive a request that identifies a requested stored digital slide image and a desired resolution for the requested stored digital slide image and determine that the desired resolution for the requested stored digital slide image is not the resolution of one of said plurality of complete images at a different resolution in the requested stored digital slide image; and

a virtual slide module configured to obtain image data from the requested stored digital slide image, scale the image data to the desired resolution, and send the scaled digital slide image data in response to the request.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the request identifies a sub-region of the stored digital slide image.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein each of said plurality of complete images are organized as a sequence of blocks.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the blocks are compressed individually.

5. The system of claim 1 wherein the virtual slide module is configured to store the scaled digital slide image data in association with the requested digital slide image.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein the scaled digital slide image data is stored in a server cache.

7. A virtual slide image file structure, comprising:

a plurality of baseline images, each baseline image comprising an image of the entire specimen on the microscope slide at a different Z layer, each baseline image having a baseline image resolution, wherein said baseline image resolution is substantially equal to the resolution as received from a scanner device;

a plurality of thumbnail images, each thumbnail image comprising an image of the complete baseline image at the corresponding baseline Z layer, each thumbnail image having a thumbnail image resolution, wherein said thumbnail image resolution is lower than the baseline image resolution;

a plurality of first intermediate level images, each first intermediate level image comprising, an image of the complete baseline image at the corresponding baseline Z layer, each first intermediate level image having a first intermediate image resolution, wherein said first intermediate image resolution is lower than the baseline image resolution and higher than the thumbnail image resolution; and

a Z axis offset for each baseline Z layer.

8. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 7, wherein the baseline image further comprises a plurality of data blocks.

9. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 8, wherein each data block is compressed.

10. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 8, wherein each data block comprises a checksum to validate image integrity.

11. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 8, wherein each data block comprises a post compression image fidelity measurement.

12. The The virtual slide image file structure of claim 7, wherein the thumbnail image has a width of up to 512 pixels and a height of up to 512 pixels.

13. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 7, further comprising a plurality of intermediate level images.

14. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 13, wherein each intermediate level image further comprises a plurality of data blocks.

15. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 14, wherein each data block is compressed.

16. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 14, wherein each data block comprises a checksum to validate image integrity.

17. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 14, wherein each data block comprises a post compression image fidelity measurement.

18. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 14, wherein the virtual slide image file is stored using the tagged image file format standard.

19. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 14, further comprising a plurality of second intermediate level images, each second intermediate level image comprising an image of the complete baseline image at the corresponding baseline Z layer, each second intermediate level image having a second intermediate image resolution, wherein said second intermediate image resolution is lower than the baseline image resolution and higher than the first intermediate image resolution.

20. The virtual slide image file structure of claim 19, further comprising a plurality of third intermediate level images, each third intermediate level image comprising an image of the complete baseline image at the corresponding baseline Z layer, each third intermediate level image having a third intermediate image resolution, wherein said third intermediate image resolution is lower than the second intermediate image resolution and higher than the thumbnail image resolution.