Digital pathology

December 2013
Digital imaging:

Definition and Evolution

Pathology: Definition

Pathology

The precise study

and diagnosis of
disease

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Digital Pathology: Definition

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Traditional microscopy: The need of
evolution…

• Sharing observations – discussing cases

• But what if your colleague is in….?

Traditional microscopy: limits…

… with a caveat:

Slide mailing….

• Slides get lost

• Slides get broken
• Delay in mail
Digital Pathology:

Interests and applications

 The era of Virtual Microscopy: principle
• From paper scanners….. to slide scanners
– Same idea: digitize the entire document/section into a single file

Very simple

Highly comple
 Scanner principle
No eyepiece: the The Digital File is
eyepiece is The View is
THEN displayed
replaced by a FIRST saved
onto a high
camera (sensor) as a digital file
definition screen

Viewing of
Recorded data

A microscope
Snap shots from
objective lens Recorded Data
Scanner Workflow

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 Focusing with virtual microscopy

• Focusing

– Performed manually and very fast on a

microscope

– The only way to mimic focusing a

scanner is to record the image on
different planes, and then “Z-stack” the
images to give a depth of field to this
image

– File size: xxGb x the number of planes

you save
Applications of the digital pathology
Applications of the digital pathology

To sum up:
What are the customer’s objectives for
digitization?

• Primary diagnosis
• Tools for better/ faster Diagnosis
• Sharing – Teaching – Consulting
• Documentation/ Storage

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Digital imaging:

Limits
Digital Pathology: Why a slow
adoption?
Limit n°1: File size
 Limit n°1: File size
• Secure and maintain the servers requires a
big investment
• It is not always legal to get rid of the
stored patient slides
• Delay of diagnosis of ~1 day, due to batch
scanning
• Only 1.8% of the scanned slides, will be
read again
• In some countries it isn’t allowed to have
the primary diagnosis from digital slides

So why digitize all slides?

Source: David Mc Clintock, MD, University of Chicago, Dept of pathology

 Limit n°2: Workflow issue

Campbell et al,
“Concordance
between WSI and
light microscopy for
routine surgical
pathology”. Hum
Pathol (2012)

Concordance: 96%
on 212 cases

Other studies :
92-98% of concordance,
Traditional Microscopy: Workflow

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Scanner Workflow
• First scans all slides completely
• One set up for all slides
• Scan time needed upfront
Scan

• Mandatory for Digital Pathology

• Requires large amount of hard
drive space (strong IT-support)
Record

• Work with large images

requires powerful computing
• Scanning artefacts delay
diagnosis
Diagnose
 To sum up…
Digital scanners: the issues
• No live reactivity from user:
– No live focusing!!!
– “Focusing “ is mimicked through Z-stacking (file size +++)

• Classic scanning process:

– Recording is time consuming
– User decides in a 2nd step whether data is informative or
not (right focus plane, proper staining…)

• Manipulating large files requires extensive memory

space… for files that may never be retrieved again !

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LIVE Digital imaging:

Sakura VisionTek
Microscopy

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VisionTekTM

Live Digital
Microscopy

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VisionTek : a LEAN concept

Workflow Efficiency

Quality

S M A R T
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VisionTekTM Core Features

Diagnose

Share

Consult

Archive

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VisionTekTM Diagnose

• High quality of image

• Annotation tools

• Multiple slides

• Multi view

Live digital microscopy

= Logical workflow

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VisionTekTM Diagnose: Multi-View

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VisionTekTM Share

• Presentations

• Meetings

• Education

Multimedia solution

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VisionTekTM Consult

• Live Connection

• Remote Control

Assistance in diagnose

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VisionTekTM Archive

• Snapshot

• Partial Slide Scan

• Z-Stacking

• Whole Slide Scan

No waste of storage

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VisionTekTM
Taking live digital microscopy to
the next level
Diagnose Share

Consult Archive

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