Histology Image Viewer and Converter (HIVC): a high-speed freeware software to view and convert whole slide histology images

Abstract

Histology images are widely used to assess the microstructure of biological tissues, but scanners often save images in bulky SVS and multi-layered TIFF formats. These formats were designed to archive image blocks and high-resolution textual information and are not compatible with conventional image analysis software. Our goal was to create a freeware Histology Image Viewer and Converter (HIVC) with a graphical user interface that allows viewing and converting whole-slide images into batches. HIVC was developed using C# Language for Windows x64 operating system. HIVC’s performance was assessed by converting 20 whole-slide images to a JPG format at 20× and 40× resolution and comparing the results to ImageJ, Cell Profiler, QuPath, Nanoborb, and Aperio ImageScope. HIVC was more than 8-times faster in converting images than other software packages. This software allows high-speed batch conversion of histology images to traditional formats, permitting platform-independent secondary analyses.