Using the AVATARA-p digital palynology slide viewer.

Through the AVATARA project, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate uses technical advances in digital pathology and applies them to geological fields of study that are grounded in traditional microscopy. Powerful client-servers stream digital slides to the user’s desktops in an optical resolution typical of high-end microscopes. Large 4K or higher resolution screens give the user an immersive experience that provides more visual information than the narrow fields of view of regular microscopy.

The user may annotate specimens for improving taxonomic consensus and discussion between workgroups. In addition, the user interface can export these annotations for generating training sets for machine learning applications. The pathologists’ tools for improving diagnoses through interprofessional communication and decision-making is now available for palynologists through the AVATARA project.