Digital Pathology Blog

Digital pathology offers significant advantages to pathology laboratories within academic institutions. In addition to clinical activities, for which digital pathology has already shown significant improvements in workflow efficiency and accuracy, such laboratories have missions of research and education, both of which can also be enhanced in the digital environment.

Case-based research projects and educational activities require the use of whole slide images (WSIs) derived from the clinical workflow. But cases flowing into these activities have specific requirements and workflows of their own.

We were privileged to present at the Digital Pathology and AI forum hosted by The Pathologist. In our portion of the forum, Dr. Wilbur focused on how the use cases and workflow solutions of digital pathology compare to those in the clinical environment. Dr. Wilbur focuses on how the use cases and workflow solutions of digital pathology compare to those in the clinical environment. While both of these are well established in the clinical setting, image management systems need some additional features to satisfy the requirements for research. Use cases and workflows are similar in how the user interacts with the digital environment but can be quite different in how they relate to the ultimate task and output.

Much of the excitement related to digital pathology comes from the ability to rapidly move cases from one place to another. Remote access from home, speedy consultations, rapid review of archival material, and access to cases for clinical conferences are just a few of the benefits that accrue from moving from glass slide analog to a digital slide environment. All of these workflows can be accomplished with glass slides but require the presence of the physical case material. With digitization the need for the physical case is negated which leads to the obvious advantages that slides need not ever be “pulled” from the files, and multiple individuals can view the same case at the same time – think about slides traveling to conferences or for consultation which then are needed immediately for clinical care or quality assurance activities. Clearly the digital pathology laboratory facilitates these processes and makes them more efficient (and safe).

There is a lot of talk currently about artificial intelligence. AI- in short, is the ability for computing systems to be programmed to perform tasks AND to learn from those tasks to refine their abilities the next time a problem or question or decision is faced by the system tasked to perform the operation.