Telemicroscopy stations for telepathology based on broadband and ISDN connections

Telemicroscopy equipment is a key tool to perform Telepathology successfully. It allows the local separation of the microscope with the tissue samples from the investigating pathologist. The Telemicroscopy stations presented provide the user with a full access to the functions such as scanning stage, focus, illumination and magnification selection of a remote microscope. One system applies as communication link a broadband video conference net of the German Telekom with full realtime capabilities and color TV-image quality. As this network provides adequate interfaces for video and computer net signals, it is well suited to establish within a short time interval a very comfortable Telemicroscopy connection without the development of additional equipment. As the broadband network is expensive the application is economically restricted to special applications. The other system relies on the narrow band connections of the ISDN telephone network. This design is inexpensive with respect to data transmission and is available nearly worldwide everywhere. But on the other hand this strategy is limited concerning realtime capabilities. To reduce these limitations to an acceptable level intelligent coding and operation concepts of the stations have to be developed.