FAQ
- What is SlideScope? SlideScope is a desktop microscopy and medical imaging viewer for Windows and macOS. It supports CZI, ND2, SVS, DICOM, and TIFF review workflows.
- Who is it for? It is built for research labs, microscopy core facilities, educators, students, and pathology review teams that need practical file review, annotations, measurements, metadata, and export.
- How does AI Analysis work? AI Analysis reads the visible frame and returns a formatted expert-style explanation with language selection, copy/share controls, and text zoom. It is for research, education, and review workflows.
- How does pricing work? Explore the built-in sample library free, with every tool. Opening your own images needs a subscription. The subscription is paid with PayPal or card and billed when you subscribe: the individual monthly plan is 35.00 USD per month and renews each month until you cancel. Cancel anytime from your account. Use one subscription on up to 2 desktop devices—Windows, macOS, or one of each—at no extra cost. Cloud-powered AI Analysis, shared views, and account-linked slide notes are included too. An individual annual option costs $349.99 USD per year, about two months free, and shared lab plans start at $79 USD per month for up to 5 contributor seats, with tiers up to 30 seats. Every plan also comes as SlideScope Plus, from $50 USD per month: up to 4 devices, 50 images in SlideScope Cloud, and unlimited notes and annotations.
- Is it a good histology slide viewer? Yes, for histology and histopathology research, teaching, and review. Scanned sections open at full resolution, structures measure in calibrated micrometres using the pixel size recorded by the scanner, and annotations stay attached to the slide. Virtual microscopy courses use it because each student runs it locally.
- Can it open whole slide imaging from a slide scanner? Yes. SlideScope opens Aperio SVS, pyramidal TIFF and OME-TIFF, and Hamamatsu NDPI, VMS, and VMU, 3DHISTECH MRXS, Leica SCN, Ventana BIF, Aperio SVSLIDE, Vectra/PerkinElmer QPTIFF, and Agilent ARGOS AVS through the OpenSlide backend. Since version 1.10.0 it also opens Olympus/Evident VSI slides from cellSens, including slides with several scan regions, each measured at its own pixel size, and Hamamatsu NDPIS fluorescence sets, and Leica SCN and Ventana BIF slides that OpenSlide cannot read open as well (BIF tile seams are not stitched yet). It reads the scanner image pyramid, so gigapixel slides open on an ordinary laptop with no image server. MRXS, VMS, and VMU slides open from local storage only, because their pixels live in a companion folder. Since version 1.20.0 it also opens Philips iSyntax and KFBio KFB slides. It does not read SQRAY SDPC, Motic MDSX, or UNIC TMAP.
- Is SlideScope image analysis software? Yes, for the quantification most laboratories actually need. Alongside viewing, calibrated measurement, metadata inspection, and annotation, Local Quantification segments nuclei, cells, or particles on your own computer and reports calibrated counts, density per square millimetre, morphology, per-channel mean intensity, and marker positivity, with CSV, GeoJSON, mask TIFF, and methods-summary exports and folder batch runs. What it does not do is scripted or custom pipelines, so ImageJ or Fiji, CellProfiler, and QuPath remain the right tools for bespoke analysis. Results are for research use and need visual quality control.
- Can I compare two slides side by side? Yes. Open a second slide beside the first and both panes stay on the same part of the tissue at the same magnification, which is the usual way to read an H&E against its IHC restain. Scale is matched in micrometres rather than by zoom factor, so two scans digitised at different resolutions genuinely correspond instead of only appearing to. Panning or zooming either pane moves the other.
- Can I export measurements and annotations to QuPath? Yes. Measurements, notes, and saved regions export as GeoJSON, which QuPath, ASAP, and the Python tooling around them read directly. Coordinates are written at full slide resolution rather than at the zoom level you happened to be viewing, so regions land in the right place. CSV export is also available for measurement tables.
- Can I send someone the exact view I am looking at? Yes. A shared view link carries the slide together with the position, zoom, and plane, so the person you send it to opens the same field of view instead of hunting across a gigapixel scan. Installed copies of SlideScope register a slidescope:// handler and open the link with one click; anyone without the app sees what the link points at on the website first. This is what makes remote review and teaching practical.
- Is SlideScope a digital pathology viewer? Yes. SlideScope is a desktop digital pathology viewer for Windows and macOS: it opens whole slide images from Aperio, Hamamatsu, 3DHISTECH, Leica, Ventana, Akoya, Philips, KFBio, and Olympus/Evident scanners at full resolution, measures in calibrated micrometres, keeps annotations attached to the slide, compares an H&E against its IHC side by side, and exports regions as GeoJSON for QuPath. It is intended for research, education, and review, not for clinical diagnosis.
- What is digital pathology? Digital pathology is the practice of scanning glass slides into whole slide images and then viewing, sharing, annotating, and analysing those images on a computer instead of at a microscope. A scanner produces a gigapixel image pyramid in a vendor format such as SVS, NDPI, or MRXS; a viewer such as SlideScope reads the appropriate resolution levels as you navigate between the overview and areas of interest.
- Is there a free version of SlideScope? Explore the built-in sample library free, with every tool. Opening your own images needs a subscription. There is no free tier for your own images. The subscription is paid with PayPal or card and billed when you subscribe: the individual monthly plan is 35.00 USD per month and renews each month until you cancel. Cancel anytime from your account. If you need a free tool, the comparison pages on this site explain when QuPath, ImageScope, or NDP.view2 is the better fit.
- Does SlideScope run on a Mac? Yes. SlideScope ships native builds for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs on macOS 14 and later, and for Windows 10 and 11. That matters because Aperio ImageScope is Windows-only, so Mac users who receive SVS files usually arrive here looking for an ImageScope alternative for macOS.
- What if a file doesn't open or render correctly? Tell us. Send the file type, the microscope or software that produced it, and what you saw. Our AI support assistant answers right away, 24/7, and a real person on our team reads every conversation and steps in whenever it matters. Unusual files, incorrect rendering, and workflows that don't behave as expected are exactly the reports that help us improve SlideScope, and helpful reports can earn rewards toward your subscription.