A method for managing a digital image of a biological specimen is disclosed. The method includes storing image data in a storage device. The image data is data for showing the image on a display. The method also includes identifying a portion of the image to be processed and transferring a first portion of the image data from the storage device to a working memory. The first portion of the image data is a portion of the image data for displaying the identified portion of the image on the display.

A system and method of assembling an application for processing image or image-derived data is disclosed. The system includes a base operator configured to interface with one or more derivative operator classes, each operator class including an operator object for executing a processing function on the image or image-derived data. A base multiport node class is provided, which is configured to provide a multiport node for each operator object. The multiport nodes instantiates a pluggable operator for connecting the multiport nodes together at runtime according to user-defined parameters. The connection of multiport nodes implements the processing functions of the operator objects to execute the application.