SurfaceSlide: a multitouch digital pathology platform

Area of Science:

• Digital pathology
• Medical imaging
• Human-computer interaction

Background:

• Digital pathology facilitates management and interpretation of pathological images.
• Current digital pathology tools are often single-user and rely on cumbersome mouse/keyboard interfaces.
• Widespread adoption is hindered by usability challenges in navigation and annotation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an intuitive and efficient platform for digital pathology image interaction.
• To overcome the limitations of traditional mouse-and-keyboard navigation in digital pathology.
• To enhance the user experience for digital slide analysis.

Main Methods:

• Developed SurfaceSlide, a dedicated viewing platform utilizing a multitouch tabletop.
• Enabled direct fingertip panning and zooming of gigapixel pathology images.
• Implemented a smart caching protocol for smooth image delivery and reduced latency.
• Compared SurfaceSlide usability against existing digital pathology viewers.

Main Results:

• SurfaceSlide provides intuitive, fast, and easy navigation and annotation of digital slides.
• The platform offers a direct and intimate human-digital slide interaction.
• Users experience a smooth and vivid interaction with gigapixel images.

Conclusions:

• SurfaceSlide significantly improves the usability of digital pathology tools.
• The platform enhances digital slide interaction for education and clinical practice.
• SurfaceSlide is expected to accelerate the adoption of digital pathology.