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Educational Value of Digital Whole Slides Accompanying Published Online Pathology Journal Articles: A
Feng Yin1, Gang Han, Marilyn M Bui
1From the Department of Pathology, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City (Drs Yin and Hassell); the Department of Biostatistics, Yale University School of Public Health, New Haven, Connecticut (Dr Han); the Department of Anatomic Pathology, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida (Dr Bui); the Department of Pathology and Cell Biology, Morsani College of Medicine at University of South Florida, Tampa (Drs Bui, Gibbs, and Martin); the Department of Pathology, Orlando Health, Orlando, Florida (Dr Sundharkrishnan); Houston Methodist Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical College, Houston, Texas (Dr King); the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minnesota (Dr Jabcuga); and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia (Dr Stuart).
Context:
-Despite great interest in using whole slide imaging (WSI) in pathology practice and education, few pathology journals have published WSI pertinent to articles within their pages or as supplemental materials.
Objective:
-To evaluate whether there is measurable added educational value of including WSI in publications.
Design:
-Thirty-seven participants, 16 (43.3%), 15 (40.5%), and 6 (16.2%) junior pathology residents (postgraduate year 1-2), senior pathology residents (postgraduate year 3-4), and board-certified pathologists, respectively, read a sequence of 10 journal articles on a wide range of pathology topics. A randomized subgroup also reviewed the WSI published with the articles. Both groups completed a survey tool assessing recall of text-based content and of image-based material pertinent to the diseases but not present in the fixed published images.
Results:
-The group examining WSI had higher performance scores in 72% of image-based questions (36 of 50 questions) as compared with the non-WSI group. As an internal study control, the WSI group had higher performance scores in only 40% of text-based questions (6 of 15 questions). The WSI group had significantly better performance than the non-WSI group for image-based questions compared with text-based questions (P < .05, Fisher exact test).
Conclusion:
-Our study provides supporting evidence that WSI offers enhanced value to the learner beyond the text and fixed images selected by the author. We strongly encourage more journals to incorporate WSI into their publications.
