Registration is open to everyone who would find the material on the website useful. UK and Irish trainees and students can register and access the website without charge. When registering, use your NHS, hospital or academic email address and the system should recognise this and process your registration.

Professional users, such as Consultants or fully qualified laboratory staff can also access the website without charge using their NHS or HSE email addresses. These users are encouraged to contribute to the running of the website here.

Users and trainees outside of the UK and Ireland are able to register but are asked to pay a one time fee. This is to cover the cost of running and developing the course material, which has been undertaken by subject matter experts based in the UK.

If you are unable to register correctly under the above categories, please contact the webmaster.

Whole slide images can be used in a similar way to a normal slide under a microscope. It can take a while to get used to the differences between digital and traditional microscopy. There are two documents which can help — a quick Getting Started guide and a full User Guide to show you how to access content on the website.

Teachers and Institution users should arrange for an introduction over Zoom by contacting the webmaster.

Yes — the material on the website was created to encourage teaching. Images and material are free to use in any teaching that is provided free to the end user. You can download slide images using the disk icon on any page with a slide viewer. Other material such as panels, HPLC and NEQAS exercises are all generated on the website and can be used with attribution in your own teaching materials.

Please add a comment that the material was provided by VirtualMicroscopy.co.uk if you wish to use our material.

You are not permitted to use the material on the website to provide commercial (paid for) courses, teaching or materials. If you wish to license the material on the website for ongoing use in a commercial arrangement please contact the webmaster.

The website contains a significant amount of material directed at trainees sitting the FRCPath examination. In the Sign Up box on the main page when you log in, there should be an option to join a Group for FRCPath teaching. Once you've signed up, the relevant courses, mock examinations and other material are available to access.

There is no charge for materials relating to the FRCPath examination, however trainees accessing the material are asked to contribute to the running costs of the website here, if they can. This helps to keep access to the site free for other users.

You can contribute by Bank transfer, PayPal or by Debit/Credit card on this page. Contributing to the running costs helps us to continue providing content and developing new features, so thank you for helping.

Behind the scenes, there is a huge amount of extra functionality allowing teachers to create their own material — from teaching sessions through to mock exams and antibody panels. If you would like access to this, please contact the webmaster.

Depending on your use case, there may be a charge for this. For NHS and HSE organisations, access to teaching functionality is free of charge.

If you've signed up for groups and are receiving emails you no longer need, you can remove yourself by visiting the My Profile page, and clicking on Subscribed Groups. There is a button next to each group to remove yourself. Note that these groups are also often used to determine access to relevant material — if you remove yourself from all FRCPath exam related groups, you won't be able to access the exam related material.

The website holds over 14 terabytes of slide images stored in a Postgres database. The main website runs on Microsoft technology — IIS running on Windows Server 2022 linked to SQL Express.

The software to process, index and display the whole slide images was written by the team at Argyle IT Consulting Ltd specifically for this purpose and does not use any proprietary image code. Argyle IT Consulting also wrote the website interface and back end plugins which drive everything.

Slides were scanned on Hamamatsu slide scanners, mostly at 80x native resolution.

There are some charges associated with accessing the website, particularly if you are accessing from outside of the UK and Ireland. Storing large numbers of whole slide images, and the processing power to display them come with a cost. We aim to meet that cost with grants, funding from support groups and charities, and contributions from users but as we grow, this is not sufficient to cover all the relevant costs.

We implemented selective charging in early 2026 in order to keep the website and material free for the majority of those who need access.

We do not pay our subject matter experts for providing material, and as such we believe we should not generate a profit from distributing that material to its intended audience.

The website therefore does not generate a profit, as all funding is directed back into running costs or further development.