Digital Pathology

The Michigan Medicine Department of Pathology supports the growth and evolution of a digital pathology environment in support of its varied missions. Digital Pathology (DP) may be defined as "an image-based information environment, enabled by computer technology, that allows for the management of information generated from a digital slide. DP is enabled in part by virtual microscopy, which is the practice of converting glass slides into digital slides [scanning] that can be viewed, annotated, and analyzed on a computer monitor."

The Slide Scanning Service (the Digital Pathology Core) performs scanning on a per-request basis; maintains a secure database of over 325,000 scanned images and associated metadata; instructs and provides technical support to faculty and staff for DP use; and is essentially involved in the growth of DP applications, including support of live-view microscopy for frozen sections and the testing and validation of new whole-slide imaging solutions.

A Visio diagram of our workflow is shown below.

 

Digital Pathology Slide Scanning Workflow: Dig Path website front flow diagram_large.jpg

 

"eSlide Manager" is the name for our vendor-provided interface. While all U-M faculty & staff with an account may access eSM with their U-M Level 2 password, eSM is less user-friendly. We recommend new users interface with our database through the search engine on the Pathology Clinical Lab Portal. 

The Virtual Slide Box is a subset of our image database, intended for teaching purposes. Patient identifiers have been removed, as it is outside the U-M firewall and accessible to the public. 

Please note:  effective July 1, 2016, recharges will be applied to all research and non-Pathology UMHS scanning requests.

 

Click here to submit slides for scanning