Systems and methods are provided for viewing portions of a very high-resolution image on a client device. The systems and methods provide for dynamic establishment of hierarchically organized contexts corresponding to regions within the image. The context hierarchy supports image inspection and analysis at increasing resolution levels for successively smaller regions. A context's region can be viewed at a base resolution appropriate for that context, while areas of interest within the context can be examined in more detail in higher resolution. To view areas of interest at resolution levels above the range for a given context, a child context can be established for a smaller region. The client device user can navigate from one area within the image to another by traversing previously established contexts and establishing new contexts.