Institute for Medical Informatics, announces iPhone application for virtual microscopy
Institute for Medical Informatics, announces iPhone application for virtual microscopy
(MMD Newswire) — The Institute for Medical Informatics, Rikshospitalet, Oslo University Hospital, announces it has developed what it believes to be the first remote application for review of pathology images for the Apple iPhone.
The application allows for a remote pathologist to review and navigate high quality images of diagnostic quality using either the cellular network or WIFI networks on the iPhone. Using the application rapid specialist referrals can be made, without access to a computer, a microscope or the original specimen. The image can be reviewed by the pathologist and used to provide a diagnosis used in cancer and other disease treatments.
Dr B. Risberg, Pathologist at the Rikshospital, Oslo says “Telepathology applications have been around for many years now and have shown their use in patient care. The portability combined with the image quality of this virtual microscopy system is a unique solution to providing input into the treatment of a patient regardless of my or the treating hospital’s location. I can even provide input while on vacation”.
The system consists of a generic high quality microscope slide scanner, of which there are several currently on the market (pretty sure I never heard any commercially available whole slide scanner referred to as "generic"), a server where the images are located and the iPhone. The iPhone is used to access the large image that is stored in the server but only to retrieve relevant parts. Using the multi-touch interface that the iPhone provides, an intuitive interface is provided that allows the user to navigate and view images of interest in a similar way to that provided by Google Earth. There are plans to put this system into immediate trials prior to consideration of its integration into our patient treatment workflow.
About the Institute for Medical Informatics, Oslo: Was founded in 2004 to be a leading site nationality and internationally for the new field merging medicine and computer science into Medical Informatics.
Contact information:
Prof Havard E Danielsen
Institute for Medical Informatics
Radiumhospitalet, Oslo University Hospital
+4790608723
