In the last 15 to 20 years computing and data power have enabled us to digitize, a complete digital slide.
Digital pathology is not only the creation of a digital slide. It also requires an integration into the existing service: capacity of integrating into different information systems. This includes:
the electronic medical records (EMR)
the laboratory information system
the pathology information system, the radiology system and so on.
Why use digital pathology ?
It allows to send the images which is useful for many reasons (see articles on Tele-pathology)
Artificial intelligence and deep learning techniques are being applied to digital pathology (histopathology); dermatology represents 17% of it terms of volume:
This helps us for instance to segment (delineate) or detect tumoral areas while achievening a better prediction than manual procedures.
It’s easy to use: either by the pathologist, or dermatologist.
interpretation by the pathologist can be made assited by AI assisted screening tool which runs in parallel.
Human intervention remains essential to integrate in the workflow of digital pathology into the whole clinical setting.
quantification is initally done with usage automatic image analysis, algorithms and also to detect tumoral area detection deep learning algorithms.
Quality controls and traceability of steps need to be checked throughout the process.
Marcial Garcia Rojo, MD. Teledermatopathology. 8th World Congress of Teledermatology, Skin Imaging and AI in Skin diseases – November 2020