Virtual reality Powerwall versus conventional microscope for viewing pathology slides: an experimental comparison

Area of Science:

• Digital Pathology
• Virtual Reality (VR) Technology
• Histopathology

Background:

• Virtual slides offer a potential replacement for traditional microscopes in histopathology.
• Current virtual slide systems can increase diagnosis time by up to 60% due to display limitations and poor user interfaces.
• There is a need for improved systems to enhance the efficiency of virtual slide diagnosis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a novel virtual reality (VR) microscope system utilizing a Powerwall display.
• To assess the efficiency and diagnostic confidence of using the VR Powerwall for viewing virtual slides compared to conventional microscopy.

Main Methods:

• A controlled user experiment was conducted comparing the VR Powerwall system with a conventional microscope.
• Four distinct histopathological tasks were evaluated: simple diagnosis, lymph node decision-making, identification of small objects, and tissue microarray scoring.
• User performance was measured by task completion time and diagnostic confidence, with user behavior recorded via video and questionnaires.

Main Results:

• Task completion times and diagnostic confidence levels were comparable between the VR Powerwall system and the conventional microscope across all four evaluated tasks.
• User behavior data provided insights into optimal training strategies for histopathologists using large-format displays.

Conclusions:

• The VR Powerwall system allows histopathologists to perform diagnostic tasks with similar speed and confidence to conventional microscopes after a brief familiarization period.
• The findings suggest that future virtual slide systems, incorporating advancements in VR microscope design, have the potential to surpass conventional microscopes in histopathological diagnosis.