Submission ID 76863
| Code | OF-1-5 |
|---|---|
| At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: | |
| Category | Medical Education |
| Type | Oral |
| Will the presenter be a: | Resident |
| Title | Are Digital Images Captured by Smartphones Adequate for Histology Teaching? |
| Background/Purpose | Currently, histology is taught to medical students at the University of Ottawa, using images acquired with digital microscopes, which can be expensive, time consuming, and cumbersome to use. An alternative is acquiring images using smartphone cameras through the eyepiece of a microscope. |
| Methods | Following lectures on gastrointestinal system histology, second-year medical students at University of Ottawa were invited to participate in an online survey that involved identifying histology images taken by both a Zeiss Axio imager A1 LED/DL microscope and an iPhone 6. The following tissues were included: esophagus, stomach, duodenum, jejunum, colon, anorectal junction, liver, portal triad, pancreas, gall bladder. Students were asked about the quality of both sets of images, whether either was superior, and whether they were both satisfactory for teaching histology. |
| Results | 84 students participated in the study. Chi-square tests were used to compare the proportion of medical students able to correctly identify microscope versus iPhone-acquired images, and no significant differences were found (significance set at p<.05). 66.7% of participants agreed that both sets of images were of adequate quality, and only 7.85% disagreed. Furthermore, both microscope and iPhone-acquired images were equally preferred (40.33% preferred microscope; 37.95% preferred iPhone; 21.73% of students were indifferent). Interestingly, iPhone-acquired images were preferred for some tissues (e.g. esophagus, duodenum, anorectal junction, pancreas and gall bladder). |
| Discussion | Using smartphone cameras to take histology images is a simple and inexpensive procedure, and produces images that are just as reliable as digital microscope-acquired images for histology teaching purposes |
| Keyword 1 | Medical education |
| Keyword 2 | Histology |
| Keyword 3 | Smart phones |
| Abstract content most relevant to: (check all that apply) | Residency Education
Undergraduate Medical Education |
| Abstract Track - First Choice | Curriculum |
| Curriculum | General |
| Authors | Alexander Pearson Safaa El Bialy |
