All Slice images are catalogued to include all available descriptive data, such as body structures and any disorders present in the image. Our catalogue uses SNOMED codes, a standard terminology for medical terms that ensures that images are easily categorised and searched. You can access all this information from the i icon at the top of the metadata panel on the left of the browser screen.
Searching Slice
Due to the size of the Slice image bank growing by the month, the Slice search bar and filters make it possible to find the right images for your teaching.
Searching starts with the free text search bar. Search results are ranked so that the most relevant images are presented first. To further refine a search result, filters can be applied. You can filter search results by:
- Image type: e.g. Macroscopic, Microscopic, Imaging, Drawing, Clinical and Laboratory images;
- Species: Filter by either common or scientific names;
- Relevancy: Choose for the most relevant results to be returned first OR the most recently added images;
- Layers: narrow results by searching for those you have made annotations on, or that have public annotation layers.
View an image
Selecting an image from the search result set, allows a quick preview (on the right) of the image key metadata fields. The matching thumbnail will be marked with light green.
To launch the image viewer and load the slide, click the image on the right, or scroll down to the preview panel, and click the “View image” button.
Advanced searching
The Slice free text bar also supports advanced queries, allowing users to search specific fields right from the front page of Slice, or from the search box at the top right. Advanced searching supports operands (AND, OR), as well as keyword and wildcard matching within specific fields corresponding to the information in the Slice metadata.
Keyword matching
Search for the word “heart” in the Body Structure field. body_structure:heart
Search for the phrase “myocardial infarction” in the Disorder field disorder:myocardial infarction
Search for the word “heart” in the Body Structure field AND the phrase “myocardial infarction” in the Disorder field body_structure:heart AND disorder:myocardial infarction
Search for the phrase “myocardial infarction” in the Disorder field AND either the word “heart” in the Body Structure field, OR the word “aorta” in the body structure field. disorder:myocardial infarction AND (body_structure:heart OR body_structure:aorta)
Wildcard matching
Search for any word that starts with “pancrea” in the Body Structure field body_structure:pancrea* Please note that this search method doesn’t support using a * symbol as the first character of a search.
Using advanced searching in Slice can be used with any of the following search fields:
- species_common:
- species_scientific:
- gender:
- age:
- clinical_history:
- material_description:
- disorder:
- original_file_name:
- content_type:
- body_structure:
- body_system:
- procedure:
- macroscopic_orientation:
- description:
- microscopic_image_type:
- wsi:
- stain:
- cell_type:
- microscopic_description:
- modality:
- imaging_description:
- drawing_type:
- drawing_description:
- contributor:
- copyright_owner:
- keywords:
- reference_id:
Searching public layers
When using keywords to search for images, those with a public layer are denoted by the public layers icon (
To search for public layers:
- Perform a search using the search bar
- Filter the results using the All Layers filter, selecting a category of Public Layers (All, Basic, Advanced, Specialist). Alternatively, use the filter to search within your My Slides section.
- Search results will indicate layers that meet the search and filter criteria
The All Layers filter works with the other filters available within Slice. Search results can be further narrowed using the Image Types and Species filters if desired.
To search for all public layers available on Slice, use double inverted commas in the search bar (“”) which will return all images on Slice. These can then be filtered using the All Layers filter.