Dariia Drobna
Supervisor(s): Ing. Miroslav Laco, PhD.
Slovak Technical University
Abstract: Digital pathology depends on creating structured annotations on whole-slide images (WSIs) using specialized software with medical image annotation tools. Existing solutions vary from open-source to proprietary, offering a wide range of annotation creation tools, integrated deep learning pipelines, and scripting options. In a medical education setting, the clinical and research tools are often too complex. In this paper, we propose a modification to the Human-Centered Design (HCD) methodology, involving the concepts of user experience (UX) design, usability, and user testing. The proposed modification focuses on user interface (UI) design in the specific medical education context and was applied during a case study to design a prototype for integrating a medical image annotation module into an existing educational tool for digital pathology. The existing tool already enables users to study and browse course materials and simulate microscopy to view digitized histological slides in WSI format. User research, such as contextual inquiry, surveys, interviews, and usability testing, was conducted to formalize users' motivations, objectives, and pain points. Based on these findings, a functional high-fidelity prototype was designed and user-tested by five participants using standard usability testing procedures. Quantitative results of the testing are combined with quantitative metrics to identify and discuss usability issues, thereby enhancing the proposed annotation tool design in subsequent iterations.
Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction
Full text: Year: 2026
