The Virtual Microscope

Joel Saltz
University of Maryland

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. Our software is designed to both emulate the behavior of an actual microscope and support new functionality that could not be supported by an optically based microscopy system. Our software makes it possible to emulate continuous stage motion along with changing magnification. Our system also supports new modes of behavior that could not be achieved with a physical microscope, such as simultaneous viewing by multiple users of different portions of a slide.

In this talk, I will describe implementation of the Virtual Microscope, using a client/server architecture. The client and server software run both in Windows and Unix environments. The client runs on a user's PC or workstation, while the database software for storing, retrieving and processing the microscope image data can either run on a variety of architectures ranging from a high performance parallel computer to a PC.