title: A virtual microscope for academic medical education: the pate project.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Whole-slide imaging (WSI) has become more prominent and continues to gain in importance in student teaching. Applications with different scope have been developed. Many of these applications have either technical or design shortcomings.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To design a survey to determine student expectations of WSI applications for teaching histological and pathological diagnosis. To develop a new WSI application based on the findings of the survey.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 216 students were questioned about their experiences and expectations of WSI applications, as well as favorable and undesired features. The survey included 14 multiple choice and two essay questions. Based on the survey, we developed a new WSI application called Pate utilizing open source technologies.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The survey sample included 216 students-62.0% (134) women and 36.1% (78) men. Out of 216 students, 4 (1.9%) did not disclose their gender. The best-known preexisting WSI applications included Mainzer Histo Maps (199/216, 92.1%), Histoweb Tübingen (16/216, 7.4%), and Histonet Ulm (8/216, 3.7%). Desired features for the students were latitude in the slides (190/216, 88.0%), histological (191/216, 88.4%) and pathological (186/216, 86.1%) annotations, points of interest (181/216, 83.8%), background information (146/216, 67.6%), and auxiliary informational texts (113/216, 52.3%). By contrast, a discussion forum was far less important (9/216, 4.2%) for the students.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The survey revealed that the students appreciate a rich feature set, including WSI functionality, points of interest, auxiliary informational texts, and annotations. The development of Pate was significantly influenced by the findings of the survey. Although Pate currently has some issues with the Zoomify file format, it could be shown that Web technologies are capable of providing a high-performance WSI experience, as well as a rich feature set.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Regenerative Pathology and Interface Research (REPAIR-Lab), Institute of Pathology, University Medical Centre, Mainz, Germany. brochhausen@pathologie.klinik.uni-mainz.de.
authors.forename: Christoph
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4296-3863
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Brochhausen
authors.forename: Hinrich B
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6283-8042
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Winther
authors.forename: Christian
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7995-1858
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hundt
authors.forename: Volker H
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5070-7280
authors.initials: VH
authors.lastname: Schmitt
authors.forename: Elmar
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5652-2591
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schömer
authors.forename: C James
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0088-418X
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Kirkpatrick
keywords: Internet; WSI; databases; e-learning; microscopy; telepathology; virtual microscopy; whole-slide imaging