Virtual Slice Module Features

MBF’s virtual slice tools provide the means to perform full morphological analysis of slide material from any location.

• Create Virtual Slides of your own material for analysis away from the microscope
• Work remotely with collaborators

Imagine a situation where a researcher has a set of experimental slides, and another researcher in a different geographical location has the expertise to analyze these slides.

Before virtual slice technology, the slides would either be shipped to the expert for analysis or the expert would travel to the slides. Shipping slides involves risk of breakage and loss, while travel involves travel expenses and lost time for the researcher. Sharing photomicrographs limits the magnification and field of view of what can be seen.

Virtual Slice technology allows for remote collaboration at a level never before possible. The features outlined below show how virtual slides can be used to effectively communicate information about microscopic slide material and perform quantitative analysis on a slide or set of slides.

With virtual slice technology, the slides are scanned and uploaded to the NeuroInformatica server (or any server using the MBF Virtual Slide Viewer). An expert can then view the slides interactively, at any magnification and at any field of view, from any computer with a standard office-grade Internet connection. Annotations can be made to the slide, to indicate the location of tumors, the extent of an anatomical region, and any other feature that can be identified with a contour, arrow, circle, flag or text.

The slide can be seen in its entirety with a macro view not available on a standard microscope. As the user zooms in on individual cells, a small thumbnail always shows the overview and current field-of-view location.

Annotation Tools: The annotation tools provide top quality demarcation of regions of interest, while related comments are linked to the exact location on the slide where the annotations were placed. Annotations can be customized to appear at a specified range of magnifications, in a specified color and size.

Tools for area and volume measurement are provided in the viewer, including a quick measure line, display of contour areas, and a scale bar.

View sample slides and annotations with MBF’s NeuroInformatica a virtual slide viewer.

Once annotations are made, any researcher with permission to view the slide can download the tracings into Neurolucida for:

• Serial section reconstruction of tracings from multiple sections
• Viewing tracings at multiple resolutions
• Editing contour names, thickness and color
• Full editing capability of contours
• Printing tracings for publication

Once exported into Neurolucida, tracings can be viewed in NeuroExplorer for:

• Full morphological analysis, including contour analysis,volume, area, surface area, etc.
• Full Branched Structure analysis of neurons

Tracings from Virtual Slides can also be used to generate 3-D Solid Models of an entire structure contained in many slides.
Please view this VRML Movie to see an interactive model showing the ability to navigate through our 3D solids module.