A comparative study of input devices for digital slide navigation

This paper describes work presented at the Nordic Symposium on Digital Pathology 2014, Linköping, Sweden. Quick and seamless integration between input devices and the navigation of digital slides remains a key barrier for many pathologists to “go digital.” To better understand this integration, three different input device implementations were compared in terms of time to diagnose, perceived workload and users’ preferences. Six pathologists reviewed in total nine cases with a computer mouse, a 6 degrees-of-freedom (6DOF) navigator and a touchpad. The participants perceived significantly less workload (P < 0.05) with the computer mouse and the 6DOF navigator, than with the touchpad, while no effect of the input device used on the time to diagnose was observed. Five out of six pathologists preferred the 6DOF navigator, while the touchpad was the least preferred device. While digital slide navigation is often designed to mimic microscope interaction, the results of this study demonstrate that in order to minimize workload there is reason to let the digital interaction move beyond the familiar microscope tradition.