QuPath Edu and OpenMicroanatomy: Open-source virtual microscopy tools for medical education.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Digital Pathology
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Virtual microscopy is prevalent in medical education and clinical practice.
• Existing software often serves either educational or quantitative analysis purposes, but not both.
• QuPath is a widely used platform for histopathology image analysis in research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To enhance QuPath for microanatomy learning with the QuPath Edu extension.
• To develop OpenMicroanatomy, a web-based platform for accessing QuPath Edu content.
• To assess the usability and student experience of these new tools in medical and dentistry education.

Main Methods:

• Developed QuPath Edu extension for QuPath software.
• Created OpenMicroanatomy web platform.
• Conducted a user survey among first-year medical and dentistry students.

Main Results:

• QuPath Edu and OpenMicroanatomy were implemented in teaching at the University of Oulu.
• Student feedback indicated appreciation for annotation and quiz features.
• OpenMicroanatomy achieved an excellent System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 84.8.

Conclusions:

• Freely available tools (QuPath Edu, OpenMicroanatomy) facilitate the creation of innovative training materials.
• These tools support multidisciplinary skills in anatomy, histopathology, quantitative analysis, and artificial intelligence.
• The integrated approach offers a unique educational solution for future medical professionals.