Preparation

1. Quality of the specimen

For manual whole slide imaging, it is important, that the specimen is of good quality. Avoiding thickness variations of the specimen speeds up the scanning process by reducing the need to refocus while scanning.

2. Structured scanning

Don't loose orientation while scanning a specimen. Look at the sample with low magnification and memorize its contour.

When scanning in horizontal stripes from top to bottom, locate the uppermost edge of the specimen and use it as starting point.

For difficult specimens with disjointed sample areas, simply take a picture of the whole slide with a smartphone first. This helps you to remember all areas that have to be scanned.

This virtual slide shows a difficult specimen. The disjointed areas were scanned in a counter-clockwise order. https://easyzoom.com/image/93238

3. Warm up the halogen illumination

Warming up the illumination is a crucial step for halogen illuminations, because the color and intensity of the lamp is changing significantly in the first few minutes of operation.

If the brightness and color keeps changing after a few minutes, this might be a hint to replace the bulb.

4. Free resources of your computer

ManualWSI is hard work for your computer. Close all other applications before starting the manualWSI application. This ensures that everything works smooth.

Attach the power supply, when using a portable computer for scanning.

After booting your computer and logging into your account, the computer is still getting this ready for you in the background.

It takes at least one additional minute for the computers resources to be available.

Running the manualWSI software too early may cause unintended behavior.