Remote microscope control for cervical cancer telediagnostic

Despite the improvements to conveniently exchange digital cytological images and patient data forms, which facilitate and accelerate cervical cancer telediagnostic, some of the diagnosed cases require the expert cytologist to remotely acquire images of the slide being examined by a less experienced technician. This paper presents an interactive remote microscope control that permits to distantly be in command of the technician optical microscope, regardless of the networking infrastructure, allowing the expert to choose the zones and images of interest in the cytological slide. It uses a virtual private network to connect the technician and expert workstations, before the required distant synchronous interaction takes place. Three step motors coupled to a control card and to the technician microscope, reproduce the distant expert commands to move the slide and focus the image. Position and focus accuracy have been successfully tested, showing the feasibility of this approach.