Popular open access virtual slide collection has a new home

We are happy to announce that Biolucida, our learning management software, is now hosting the Iowa Virtual Slidebox. This vast repository of digitized tissue specimens is open to the public and is free of charge. Virtual slides in this collection are used by educators around the world to teach histopathology and histology.

“Educators and students will now have easier and quicker access to virtual slides from the Iowa Virtual Slidebox,” said Dr. Nathan O’Connor, Biolucida product manager. “In addition, MBF can offer fully annotated versions of these slides that highlight specific structures or areas of interest within the specimens.”

The collection was curated by Fred Dee, MD, a pathologist at the University of Iowa who is a pioneer in using virtual slides for medical education. “We created this virtual slide collection with a grant from the National Library of Medicine to provide an efficient open source alternative for histology and histopathology course directors around the world, as traditional laboratory based glass slide microscopy was beginning to disappear from curricula,” said Dr. Dee. “The Iowa Virtual Slidebox has been hosted by MBF Bioscience since 2001. We are extremely pleased that MBF Bioscience will continue that tradition with their new Biolucida software.”

Biolucida is a learning platform that uses virtual slides  ̶  high-resolution digital images of tissue specimens  ̶  to simulate the experience of using a light microscope, complete with the ability to focus in z through specimens. It supports images that are hundreds of gigabytes in size, and it is web-based so educators and students can view the slides from any computer with an internet connection.