Abstract

Background: Histopathological features are often confusing for undergraduate students when taught on conventional glass microscopy. Therefore, medical, and dental schools are now shifting towards digital and virtual slides for teaching purposes. However, the effectiveness of this mode of teaching has not been reported earlier.

Objective: The objective of the current study is to report the usefulness of virtual microscopy in oral pathology teaching at undergraduate level.

Study design: The university of Leeds online slide library was used to evaluate its effectiveness in teaching oral pathology slides. This library currently contains more than 9000, open access, online virtual slides. The web-based software “webscope” was used to view the online slides. Challenges faced by staff members and students are presented here. A standard questionnaire was used to evaluate the effectiveness of virtual microscopy in teaching undergraduate students.

Results: An overall enhancement of student understanding was noticed when the virtual slides were used for teaching compared to the conventional slides regarding identification of pathological findings. The virtual slides were also able to improve students’ interaction during the teaching process. The software was comparatively simple to understand and time taken by the students to identify histopathological features decreased significantly.

Conclusions: Virtual microscopy represents an effective tool for teaching histopathology of oral pathological lesions at undergraduate level.

Key words: Digital microscopy, virtual microscopy, undergraduate students, conventional microscopy, oral pathology.