It is possible to reliably and efficiently determine whether a specimen contains
viruses, bacteria, etc. and, if it does, identify their types, regardless of the
observer. Furthermore, even a newly-discovered bacterium can be quickly identified
by utilizing a database at a remote location. A transmission microscope system
has a microscope for observing a specimen and a database which stores, for each
microscopic thing (such as a virus), a name, a specimen pretreatment method and
an imaging condition used when the microscopic thing is observed, captured image
data, etc. An image of the specimen is captured according to a specimen pretreatment
method and an imaging condition retrieved from the database using the name of a
target microscopic thing as a key, and the captured image is compared with images
stored in the database to identify microscopic things present in the specimen.