A collection is a group of whole slide images that are gathered and treated as a single unit, because they share a common characteristic, purpose, or function. Another common name used in digital pathology for collections is Projects. Typical examples are:

• Teaching sets based around cell types, organs,…
• Projects based on research interest
• Case collections for a specific cancer type
• Case Sharing for a specific collaborator or hospital

It is very important to understand that a single whole slide images can belong to different collections and that the mechanism behind is not to create a copy of the image which would increase our storage need and create identical name conflict, instead it is the same image that can be accessed from different collections and arranged according to a specific context.

A collection also provides users with:

1. Quick Sharing.
2. Viewing, including multiple side-by-side viewing comparison, synchronizing images and annotating.
3. Easy organization in Cases, with each Case representing an individual subject, organ or timepoint.
4. You can also make Collection-specific annotations and export them.

To summarize, the purpose of a collection is to store, group, access, analyze, and display whole slide images.