The Internet Microscope

2007

This research is an exploratory study of students' approaches to studying histology and pathology. With the introduction of virtual microscopes in Health Science at Murdoch University, Australia, in 2006, it was crucial to investigate how this new technology impacted on students' approaches to learning. The ASSIST survey was implemented at the beginning and end of the semester to identify any changes. Results indicate that, when the technology was integrated into the curriculum with appropriate learning activities, students using virtual microscopes moved more towards a strategic approach to learning but expressed a preference for a deep approach to teaching.

BMC Medical Education, 2011

BACKGROUND: Curricular reform efforts and a desire to use novel educational strategies that foster student collaboration are challenging the traditional microscope-based teaching of histology. Computer-based histology teaching tools and Virtual Microscopes (VM), computer-based digital slide viewers, have been shown to be effective and efficient educational strategies. We developed an open-source VM system based on the Google Maps engine to transform

2013

The increasing concern about visual representation in science has been usually converged on representations – photographs, diagrams, graphs, maps –, while instruments of visualization have been usually neglected, even because of the concrete difficulty to grasp their effects on visualization. In this regard, the questions and concepts formulated in the debate on digital visualization deserve here as a starting point to analyze the change in instrumental mediation triggered by the introduction of computer-assisted imaging technologies in those laboratories that traditionally have used and still use microscopes. Empirical materials gathered during an ethnographic investigation of Italian cytogenetics labs are here presented to show the visual spaces provided by microscopes and digital systems as activity fields, which are inhabited by and suggest in an either divergent or complementary way specific practices, materials, organizations, epistemological orientations and aesthetical preferences.

—the use of high accuracy positioning systems provides endless possibilities for the development of remote laboratories. The remote laboratory presented in this paper allows full control of a microscope over a surface by the use of a Cartesian positioning system. The arrangement of multiple samples over the accessible surface by the lens so far as the provision of a rich graphical user interface will allow secondary school students to carry multiple experiments in biology, physics and chemistry through internet.

Anatomical Sciences Education, 2018

Over the last 20 years, virtual microscopy has become the predominant modus of teaching the structural organization of cells, tissues and organs, replacing the use of optical microscopes and glass slides in a traditional histology or pathology laboratory setting. Although virtual microscopy image files can easily be duplicated, creating them requires not only quality histological glass slides but also an expensive whole slide microscopic scanner and massive data storage devices. These resources are not available to all educators and researchers, especially at new institutions in developing countries. This leaves many schools without access to virtual microscopy resources. The Virtual Microscopy Database (VMD) is a new resource established to address this problem. It is a virtual image file-sharing website that allows researchers and educators easy access to a large repository of virtual histology and pathology image files. With the support from the American Association of Anatomists (Bethesda, MD) and MBF Bioscience Inc. (Williston, VT), registration and use of the VMD are currently free of charge. However, the VMD site is restricted to faculty and staff of research and educational institutions. Virtual Microscopy Database users can upload their own collection of virtual slide files, as well as view and download image files for their own non-profit educational and research purposes that have been deposited by other VMD clients.

Proceedings : a conference of the American Medical Informatics Association / ... AMIA Annual Fall Symposium. AMIA Fall Symposium, 1997

We present the design of the Virtual Microscope, a software system employing a client/server architecture to provide a realistic emulation of a high power light microscope. We discuss several technical challenges related to providing the performance necessary to achieve rapid response time, mainly in dealing with the enormous amounts of data (tens to hundreds of gigabytes per slide) that must be retrieved from secondary storage and processed. To effectively implement the data server, the system design relies on the computational power and high I/O throughput available from an appropriately configured parallel computer.

… -Vilas A, Diaz J, Mendez-Vilas A, Diaz J. …, 2007

Turning the pages of high impact journals in the life sciences reveals the extent to which many disciplines are converging on the technology of live cell imaging. Yet, due to the high cost of digital imaging equipment, few undergraduates have an opportunity to work with this powerful technology. We confronted this issue by designing a basic, inexpensive workstation that could be fitted readily to standard student microscopes, and by using this workstation to introduce interactive imaging exercises to all levels of our life sciences curriculum. By adapting a consumer-grade digital camera with live video to a student microscope and adding flat screen TV as a monitor, digital microscopy becomes a stimulus for student inquiry and discussion. With standard computers and minimal software, students can capture images or movies to document their observations in a digital lab notebook and perform analyses offline. In this context, familiar exercises like sea urchin fertilization, cytoplasmic streaming in Elodea or behavior of protists, can provide fresh data insights that engage student in critical analysis of the molecular regulation of life. Thus, a modest investment in technology generates an environment for active learning, pushes students to make cross-disciplinary connections and prepares undergraduates to work effectively with images as experimental data.

2012

Journal of undergraduate neuroscience education : JUNE : a publication of FUN, Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience, 2008

The majority of undergraduate students studying for a science degree will at some point carry out experiments in a laboratory setting, thus developing their practical skills and understanding of experimental principles. For distance learning students, there is no laboratory setting available for them to complete such work and as such there is a risk that they will lack these key skills. The Open University has developed a computerized tool, in the form of a Digital Microscope, to allow students to collect data to investigate the effects of drugs of abuse on different regions of the rat brain. Small groups of students were set a specific hypothesis to investigate, in this instance students were looking at the differential effects of cocaine and amphetamine on the caudate putamen. Using the microscope students counted the number of Fos positive cells in the caudate putamen to contribute to a group data set. Tutors collated the data from all students in the group and returned the full ...

Optics Education and Outreach V, 2018

Microscopes play a central role in hands-on science exploration and communication. All too often, however, students do not have a good understanding of the optical principles that govern microscopy and lack access to instruments that could help them build that understanding. Here we present an open-source Do-It-Yourself (DIY) microscope kit developed by scientists and students at BioBus, a nonprofit organization for science outreach and education based in New York City (www.biobus.org). The DIY microscope uses 3D printing to make highly adaptable optical technology readily available to educators at a low cost. Its modular configuration makes it the perfect tool to teach optical design to students of all ages. At BioBus, Inc., over 230 school-age students and teachers learned basic optics and microscope building with the DIY microscope at our community and mobile laboratories. We further present examples of how the DIY microscope was used as a platform for student-driven projects, expanding the original design to include advanced optical features such as fluorescence and infrared imaging. The images, acquired with a low cost camera, were comparable in quality to those taken using professional grade laboratory microscopes. The use of the DIY microscope is not limited to applications in physical sciences, but can also be used as an interdisciplinary teaching tool. As an example, we showed how it was configured into a functional model of the eye, to explain the physics of vision and the pathophysiology of eye disorders, such as far and short-sightedness, and age-related macular degeneration.