Christoph Brochhausen*, REPAIR-lab, Institute of Pathology, University Medical Centre of the Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany Hinrich B Winther*, REPAIR-lab, Institute of Pathology, University Medical Centre of the Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany C James Kirkpatrick, REPAIR-lab, Institute of Pathology, University Medical Centre of the Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany Track: Research Presentation Topic: Building virtual communities and social networking applications for health professionals Presentation Type: Oral presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: Sheraton Maui Resort Room: C - Napili Date: 2014-11-13 02:00 PM – 02:45 PM Last modified: 2014-09-04

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Background: Whole Slide Imaging (WSI), also known as virtual microscopy, has become more and more relevant over the last decade. We have analysed existing WSI applications and conducted a user-survey. Based on these findings we developed a new WSI application - Pate - utilizing modern internet technologies.
Although we employed a demand-driven development model, relevant shortcomings in the application became evident. Content could only be created by users with privileged accounts. Thus, it was impossible for non-privileged users to upload WSI image data or to edit datasets. Consequently, the development of a community for whole slide imaging was inhibited.
Objective: The aim of our recent work is to demonstrate how the existing application can be modified to support the development of an active community so that the user can be empowered to change his role from a content consumer to a content producer of Pate.
Methods: The application Pate is developed in Python. The client application is implemented in HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3. The different identity-providers are implemented using the OAuth protocol as supplied by flask-oauthlib.
Results: To enable a low level of entry we implemented login functionality for major identity providers like Google, Facebook, Twitter and others. This enables the user to utilise their social media accounts in order to log into Pate. Furthermore, we implemented drag and drop functionality to upload image files to the server. This requires the user to convert the WSI image into a compatible file format, namely Tiled TIFF. In order to enhance the user experience this could be handled by the server. If the conversion process is not handled by the user, at least a tool should be provided that is able to convert all common file formats into Tiled TIFF.
Finally, the user should be enabled to annotate the image data. This includes features like non destructive annotations, points of interest as well as supplementary texts. This should be implemented intuitively with a low learning curve.
Conclusions: To enable the user to participate in the Pate-project and to build up an active community, several features are implemented within Pate. This includes easy means of login as well as intuitive tools to create and upload content. These features followed an important motto to empower users to produce their own content: it should not be harder to share a WSI image than to upload the image itself.