Background: Automated high-speed, high-resolution whole slide image (WSI) technology is being rapidly adopted in pathology owing to increased speed of computing, rapid networking, and high image quality and potential to reduce the overall turnaround time required for slide assessment. Method/objectives: This review presents the structure, functioning and performance of some of the WSI systems available in the market and highlights a few validation studies that have been performed to assess the overall utility of WSI systems.
Conclusion: The automated WSI is a robotic microscope that digitizes the entire slide field by field and uses software to merge or stitch individual fields into a composite image. Commercially available systems provide many improved functions that are useful for editing the digital images and improving the image quality.