It has become important in this day and age to be able to remotely diagnose cases, have remote meetings and possibly control a microscope remotely. This saves time and money due to consultants not having to be by the microscope to view the patients slide or in a cut up environment the patients’ biopsy.
Also in terms of MDT meetings where you may have multiple consultants needing to attend from deferent departments or even different hospitals. The time and cost to have everyone attend in one room is immense.
Digital Imaging Systems have developed two systems to tackle this issue LiveDIS and ScanDIS.
LiveDIS
LiveDIS is a system designed for remote meetings where multiple remote attendance can have a meeting whilst sitting in their offices. There is a main meeting point where all the equipment needed for the meeting i.e. microscope, PC is situated. Consultants can remotely login to the meeting securely and view the images from the microscope or PC and can discuss via audio or Skype for Business and many other communication apps.
This system can also be extended such that any attendee can take over the control of the meeting and broadcast images from their office on their microscope.
ScanDIS
ScanDIS is a similar system to Live DIS except for it is designed for a one to one communication link. The users can speak to each other via a phone call or other communication apps and the remote attendee can see live images from the other end. The difference with this system is the consultant at the remote end can take over the control of the microscope, which is motorised, and scan the slide themselves. They can scan a whole slide on a low power objective then change to a high-power objective and use the low power image, by clicking on it, to direct the stage to view on the high-power objective.
The remote attendee can also take control of the stage via a desktop joystick and scan the stage in X , Y and Z.
An example of one application where this would be needed is in an operation where a frozen section will be needed. At present a consultant needs to sit and wait, in an operation, until the frozen section becomes available. With ScanDIS the consultant can continue to work in his office until the frozen section is ready then logon to the ScanDIS and take control of the microscope from his office to diagnose. Save a lot of time and money.
