Performance Analysis of Three Microscope Slide Scanning Techniques

The demands for digital pathology systems have increased dramatically in the last decade as Virtual Microscopy (VM) has gained increasing popularity. Many digital slide acquisition systems have been developed to meet this demand, utilising a variety of image scan techniques. However, the requirements for, and performance of, these scan techniques are largely undocumented. Therefore, in this paper we evaluate the three primary approaches to digital slide scanning in light field microscopy: field-of-view (FOV) scan, line scan and slanted specimen scan. Initially, we develop equations for each technique that estimates their theoretical scan times in terms data throughput rates. Next, we compare each system's performance based on the relationships between illumination, camera frame rates, data transfer rates and microscope stage speed. We conclude that slanted scan system capable of acquiring multiple focal planes in one pass have the potential to obtain the shortest scan times within current constraints on stage and camera hardware.