USING VIRTUAL MICROSCOPY TO RE-IMAGINE GEOSCIENCE TEACHING, RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Virtual microscopy as a technology is distinct from AI-based image analysis. Microscope slides are digitized at microscopic resolution creating an image covering the entire slide. These digital slides are examined using a virtual microscope that mimics examination with a physical microscope. The development of multiple co-registered images digitized at different focal depths added the ability to focus up/down when examining tissue, palynology and nannofossil slides. It also added the ability to examine petrographic thin sections under plane-polarized and cross-polarized light. Virtual microscopy has been used for education, research and industry for over 20 years. The technique has distinct advantages for education in that all the students can examine a slide at the same time and samples are not at risk of breakage. A teaching collection can be kept online in a lab or class directory and accessed remotely.

The most basic virtual microscope system is a simple viewer for examining a virtual slide. MicroPet™ is an example of a more complex viewer for petrographic thin sections. It is customized for viewing multifocal imagery. It facilitates the display of petrologic thin section imagery ranging from pairs of plane-polarized and cross-polarized images to compound imagery simulating 0-90° polarizer rotation under both plane- and cross-polarized light. MicroPet™ contains tools customized for quantitative petrographic analysis, making the process of obtaining quantitative data, fundamental to studies of provenance and reservoir characterization, more practical and efficient. It makes easy work of setting up modal analysis grids or transects and conducting compositional and grain size point counts. MicroPet™ automatically saves the results along with a record of the exact position of each measurement, providing digital documentation of each observation that can be shared electronically between co-workers and collaborators or preserved as an educational library. Data can be reviewed, interrogated, and edited. Virtual microscopy has the potential to turn the art of petrographic thin-section analysis into a technique that is quantifiable, verifiable, repeatable, and even more enjoyable. Applications of this innovative approach are limited only by the imagination.