|
Approximate cost (excluding telecommunications and
microscope |
Approximate minimum bandwidth required |
Action required for consultation |
Advantages |
Potential problems |
Potential applications |
| Robotic telepathology |
US$80 000 (but includes microscope) |
At least 512 kb/s, more the better |
Place slide on stage |
Remote user has complete control over image selection |
Expensive
No current standard
No interoperability between difft manufacturers
High bandwidth requirements |
Frozen section diagnosis
Second opinion consultation |
Non-robotic
realtime/dynamic telepathology |
Variable < US$1000 for camera with live video output |
Typical systems use
2 - 4 ISDN lines
(2 - 4 x 64 kg/s) |
Move stage and adjust microscope as requested by pathologist |
Simple to set up |
Image quality poor if using video-conferencing codec |
Second opinion
consultation
Frozen section |
| Simple store-and-forward telepathology |
<US$1000 for 3.3 megapixel camera |
V.90 (56 k/s) |
Capture images beforehand, transmit images |
Low cost
Minimal hardware expenditure |
Acquiring images is labour-intensive
Possibility of sampling error |
Second opinion consultation
Continuing education
|
| Interactive store-and-forward telephathology/digital
slide |
< US$1000 for camera + labour to manually acquire
images and write webpage or US$80 000 + for a robotic scanning system |
At least 512 kb/s |
Place slide on stage, choose area(s) to scan |
Reduces sampling error
Slightly faster than robotic telepathology as majority
of images have already been acquired |
High initial cost
Scanning process can take several hours
Difficulty digitising thick specimens with multiple focal
planes |
Continuing education
Second opinion
Digital archiving
Medical education |
