Virtual Microscopy means the capability of viewing whole microscope slide images in digital form on a computer or over a network. These digital images are called "virtual slides." They typically contain billions of image pixels, preserving all the crucial information of the original glass slide in glorious detail and image quality; even focus depth information can be preserved if required. Instead of peeping through a microscope's eyepiece a virtual slide is viewed very conveniently on a computer monitor screen.

The benefits of Virtual Microscopy include:

easily and instantaneously view images over existing computer networks, even over large distances via the Internet
share exactly the same image with colleagues at the same time
enjoy superior work ergonomics
forget about slide degradation during long-term storage
annotate slides without affecting their contents
open up many possibilities for software-aided image analysis

These benefits make Virtual Microscopy the ideal method for the following applications:

remote diagnostic viewing
clinical remote consultation
group presentations and discussion
student education
case libraries and tissue databanks
large-volume software-aided image analysis

Exploiting Hamamatsu's latest sensor technology, the NanoZoomer scanners are capable of fast scanning while providing unsurpassed image resolution and quality. Scanning under brightfield and fluorescence conditions, fully automatic batch processing of many slides, Z-stack scanning for keeping focus information, are some of the many outstanding capabilities of these state-of-the-art scanning machines.

Press release, re: U.S. patent infringement lawsuit (June 18, 2009)

For customers in North America:
Olympus America

For customers in Japan:
Hamamatsu Photonics K.K