Designing a real-time telepathology workstation to mitigate communication delays

Dynamic telepathology uses a teleoperated microscope to allow pathologists to view samples at a remote location. However, time delays introduced by remote operation have made use of a commercial dynamic telepathology system difficult and frustrating. This paper describes the iterative redesign of the user interface. We redesigned the interface, conducted experiments to evaluate the improvements, and then redesigned the user interface based on the results.Our work shows that predictive displays and local maps improve user control of the microscope and increase user comfort with the system. It also indicates that some degree of automation is necessary to support the navigation process and increase the overall usefulness of the system. Therefore, we also make recommendations for further automation to support the telepathology process and increase the usefulness of the system.
While performed on a specific device using a dedicated communications system, the same problems would be encountered in other environments. For example, Internet-based systems that enable remote control or require browsing of large images will need to compensate for time delays and can benefit from our experience with the telepathology application.