Comments:

This QTVR (Quicktime Virtual Reality) in-line web browser image viewimg technique is derived from the Department of Medical Informatics at UF Gainesville where it is being considered for the presentation of histopathology.

Pros:

• Simple, WYSIWYG intuitive interface.
• Could possibly be integrated with html batch processors such as the MTX Tool by Dr. Richard Rathe, UF, Gainesville.
• Smooth/rapid zoom controls
• Compact, unobtrusive control panel

Cons:

• Serious flanging and distortion of gray shades with any PC Windows based web browser causes images to be well below standards for diagnostic quality.
• Counter-intuitive image drag mechanism. Drag left - the image goes right.
• Special (Quicktime) plug-in required
• Requires a significant RAM (probably 128 MB) when viewing multiple large image files images, otherwise the hard disk starts to grind (using VM) and the image display procedure slows and eventually fails.
• There is no possibility to window/level, rotate, invert or perform other common image manipulation manuevers. There are more complex web browser based java image viewers such as Andrew Barclay's Grayscale Image Viewer which permits control of gamma, image inversion, window and leveling.
• Each image must be individually converted from jpeg to qtvr format using Quicktime VR Authoring Studio (v1.0.1). Although this application is highly applescriptable and therefore amenable to scripted batch processing, both height and width image dimensions must be divisible by "4" - which would require another complicated qtvr preprocessing script with something like Debabelizer.