1. A method for viewing virtual microscope slides comprised of sets of digitized tiled images over a common communication channel, the method comprising: providing a transmitting station connected to the common communication channel and accessible by a number of remote receiving stations connected to the common communication channel; storing a plurality of sets of virtual microscope, digitized slide images at the transmitting station; transmitting control information to the requesting computer for use in aligning the transmitted sets of digitized tiled images to form a composite, coherent, seamless digitized, virtual microscope, slide image from a set of digitized tiled images; displaying on a viewer at a remote receiving station a thumbnail view of a specimen or portion thereof on the virtual microscope slide; displaying on the viewer at the remote receiving station an aligned set of digitized tiled images at a higher resolution than the resolution of the thumbnail view; and zooming by the viewer back and forth between the thumbnail view and the higher resolution set of digitized tiled images.