Researchers and educators Katharina Sternecker, Christoph Schmitz, and Markus Berndt at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich) evaluated 415 medical students who completed the full study, using Histologi@, LMU Munich’s virtual 3D slide box. The system uses MBF Bioscience Biolucida server software to deliver high-resolution, fully scanned histological glass slides through the Biolucida Viewer. 

The study used a cross-over design across two course days focused on kidney and liver anatomy, so every student experienced both formats. Approximately half of the students attended the first session in person and the second online, while the other half participated in the reverse order. Online students joined the same live instruction through Zoom and used Histologi@ on their own devices, while in-person students used the system at workstations in the microscopy laboratory. 

The researchers found no significant difference in learning outcomes between online and face-to-face participation. This suggests that, when students receive the same instruction and have access to the same virtual microscopy resources, synchronous online learning can be as effective as classroom-based instruction for microscopic anatomy. 

Histologi@ includes 197 3D (focusable) virtual slides digitized  from histological glass slides. Students can magnify specimens and move through focus planes, supporting an interactive learning experience that reflects key aspects of traditional microscopy, while making materials available from any location. 

The study also examined whether characteristics such as students’ comfort with technology or self-organization affected performance. These factors had limited predictive value overall, although self-organization showed a small, consistent relationship with learning outcomes in both formats. 

These findings suggest that digital microscopy can widen access to anatomy education without lowering short-term learning outcomes. With Biolucida Medical Education, institutions can securely provide students with browser-based access to large, high-resolution microscopy datasets, whether they are learning in the lab, classroom, or at home. 

Histologi@ is freely available for your school 

Medical schools interested in using Histologi@ for histology teaching may request a free copy of the complete 3D virtual slide package by contacting the paper’s corresponding author, Dr. Katharina Sternecker. The package includes approximately 4 TB of data, so institutions would need to arrange data transfer and use the Biolucida server and client software required to view the proprietary file format. Several medical schools in Europe already use these slides in their teaching. 

Histologi@ is also supported by a comprehensive, 600+ page script that helps students learn histology and microscopic anatomy using the virtual slides. The German version is available free of charge through LMU Munich’s repository, and a free English version will be available soon. 

Read the study 

Sternecker K, Schmitz C, Berndt M. Students’ Learning Outcomes in a Virtual Microscopic Online and Face-to-Face Anatomy Course: Cross-Over Comparative Study. JMIR Med Educ 2026;12:e82012. URL: https://mededu.jmir.org/2026/1/e82012. DOI: 10.2196/82012 

The paper was published in JMIR Medical Education, which ranks #1 of 89 journals in Education and has an Impact Factor of 13.9. Learn more about the journal’s indexing and impact factor. 

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Educators and researchers around the world now have free access to a database of whole slide images (also known as virtual slides) for histology and pathology. Featuring thousands of virtual slides contributed by 15 universities, The Virtual Microscopy Database, VMD, (http://www.virtualmicroscopydatabase.org/) is an online resource that allows educators to view and download virtual images and share their own.

Powered by MBF Bioscience‘s Biolucida^® for Medical Education solution, VMD gives educators an overview of individual slides and allows examination of various parts of the image at magnifications up to 40x. The users can take a screenshot or download the file at any time.

Funded by an Innovations Program Grant awarded by the American Association of Anatomists (AAA), the resource was developed by researchers from the University of Colorado, Drexel University College of Medicine, and the University of Michigan with corporate support from MBF Bioscience. With thousands of freely accessible virtual microscopy images, the VMD helps meet a growing need for better access to histology slides among educators and non-profit research organizations. The AAA foresees the images being used in a variety of educational ways such as for lectures, exams, and for creating supplementary course material as well as for non-profit research initiatives.

Collection of Virtual Slides in the Biolucida Viewer

“The greatest strength of the VMD is the availability of a large number of high quality virtual microscopy images to its users. The diversity and multiple examples of histological variations available in the VMD collections will enable histology and pathology educators to elevate the quality of their teaching by exposing their students to a broader variety of images and by experimenting with new pedagogical techniques in their classrooms.” (Lisa Lee, Ph.D., University of Colorado)

“We are proud to be part of the AAA’s efforts to improve the access of histology and pathology digital slides for medical educators and students by providing the underlying technology for this important resource. Any of the virtual slides in this new resource can be downloaded and used on an organization’s Biolucida on-premise or cloud-based server,” says Jack Glaser, president of MBF Bioscience.

Individuals affiliated with educational or research institutions may register to access the database. Once approved, users can browse files, or search for specific types of tissue. Currently, the VMD site includes over 2,600 virtual microscopy files, but as new users join the VMD file sharing community that number will grow as will the diversity of tissue and species type.

About AAA:

The American Association of Anatomists was founded by Joseph Leidy in Washington, D.C. in 1888 for the “advancement of anatomical science.” Today, via research, education, and professional development activities, AAA serves as the professional home for an international community of biomedical researchers and educators focusing on the structural foundation of health and disease.

About MBF Bioscience:

MBF Bioscience produces advanced microscopy imaging and analysis systems for biomedical research and education. The award-winning company was co-founded in 1988 by Edmund and Jack Glaser.

www.mbfbioscience.com

Contact:

Nathan O’Connor, Ph.D.

Product Manager/Technical Sales

nate.oconnor@mbfbioscience.com

1-802-288-9290

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Dr. Robert Ogilvie has been teaching histology with virtual slides for over 15 years. He is a pioneer in the field of virtual microscopy; striving to make learning histology more active and accessible to the next generation of doctors and researchers.

Dr. Ogilvie has won numerous teaching awards throughout his 45 year teaching career, including the most recent one – the 2016 Henry Gray Distinguished Educator Award which is the American Association of Anatomists’ highest education award. He will accept the award on Tuesday, April 5 at the 129^th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Anatomists that is meeting at the same time as many other societies as a part of the Experimental Biology Meeting (EB2016) in San Diego, CA. After accepting the award he will present a lecture titled ‘On the Way to Virtual’ where he will discuss his experiences using virtual microscopy to teach histology. The talk will culminate with an example of a fully online histology course he teaches using Biolucida, Blackboard, and WebMic – a virtual microscopy program he helped develop. Enrollment doubled when the course was offered online, and it remains popular for students from a wide range of majors.

Watch a six minute video that illustrates and describes the essential components of the online histology course offered by the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina

Watch this 3 minute video of Dr. Ogilvie teaching histology with virtual slides and Biolucida

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“Educators and students will now have easier and quicker access to virtual slides from the Iowa Virtual Slidebox,” said Dr. Nathan O’Connor, Biolucida product manager. “In addition, MBF can offer fully annotated versions of these slides that highlight specific structures or areas of interest within the specimens.”

The collection was curated by Fred Dee, MD, a pathologist at the University of Iowa who is a pioneer in using virtual slides for medical education. “We created this virtual slide collection with a grant from the National Library of Medicine to provide an efficient open source alternative for histology and histopathology course directors around the world, as traditional laboratory based glass slide microscopy was beginning to disappear from curricula,” said Dr. Dee. “The Iowa Virtual Slidebox has been hosted by MBF Bioscience since 2001. We are extremely pleased that MBF Bioscience will continue that tradition with their new Biolucida software.”

Biolucida is a learning platform that uses virtual slides  ̶  high-resolution digital images of tissue specimens  ̶  to simulate the experience of using a light microscope, complete with the ability to focus in z through specimens. It supports images that are hundreds of gigabytes in size, and it is web-based so educators and students can view the slides from any computer with an internet connection.

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Thanks to Biolucida Cloud 2.0, educators and students are no longer bound to the traditional classroom and lab, and the limitations of glass slides are a thing of the past.

According to Nate O’Connor, Product Manager, “educators can be sure that every student sees the same images, and they can give all students experience with rare cases without putting delicate glass slides at risk.”  Students can access tissue specimens from home or the library and “it’s much easier to collaborate with study groups using a computer monitor instead of taking turns looking through oculars,” adds O’Connor.

Biolucida Cloud’s architecture is specially designed to allow many users to simultaneously access big images (with file size reaching hundreds of gigabytes) and navigate through them quickly and smoothly. Moreover, it also allows educators to use any 2D or 3D virtual slide, whether it was acquired with a slide scanner or imaging software.

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