This is a 4-day course held every year during the last week of July (Monday through Thursday). The curriculum aims to cultivate basic neuropathology skills, including understanding diagnostic methods and pathology, through hands-on practice with human neuropathy specimens that can be directly handled and viewed via microscopy.
The curriculum also includes digital pathology using the Neuropathology Database to virtually examine digital data with PCs. The specimens to be examined cover a broad range of disease categories, ranging from brain malformations to senile brain disorders, which will enable the attendees to examine many pathologies in a short period.
Each student will be provided with a microscope, and a discussion-microscope will be used to provide individual guidance. Digital training methods will be introduced using a digital image database with virtual slides, facilitating improved training efficiency. This course has much to offer to attendees who are doctors involved in pathological diagnosis, clinicians considering becoming specialists in neurology, or researchers interested in neuropathomorphology. This course is also recommended for medical interns at the Tokyo Doctor’s Academy.
In this training, instead of accessing the on-campus server, the students remotely access to our database which is rich in elaborate educational digital images.
First, a login account was issued to each student, enabling access to the database from the PC in the audiovisual room. In the database, we have created a collection of content specifically for this training. The content collection includes virtual slide data, textbook contents, quizzes, reports, and questionnaires of major lesions of 12 representative diseases. Instead of PC, various devices like iPad and Smartphone are available.
The account is activated for long days after the training, so it is possible to review at any time even at home.
There is no doubt that enrichment of education using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will become even more widespread in the future. In addition to the enhancement of the ICT infrastructure, the operation of such a digital database will enable a revolutionary mechanism for the next generation of pathology education. In the future, we will begin to work to spread it to medical schools nationwide.
