From Digital to Computational Pathology and Integrated Diagnostics: The Future of Histopathology
Muhammed Mubarak · Journal of College of Physicians And Surgeons Pakistan · 2021
Among the various branches of clinical pathology, histopathology has been the most conservative and slowest in adapting to automation and digitisation in this era of information technology (IT).It is still largely a manual and qualitative science; and heavily dependent on the opinion of medical experts. 1 The last attribute of it imparts subjectivity to the field.One of the main reasons for its slow adaptation to automation is the fact that several, manual and largely independent steps, are involved in the preparation of material for visualisation under the microscopes by the pathologists and beyond, which, on a cursory look, seem unfit for automation and digitisation.However, there is one other example of a medical diagnostic field with similar objections and reservations in the beginning; but which, during recent past, has undergone successful digitisation, i.e. radiology.There are many similarities between radiology and histopathology: both are used for making diagnosis, both are subjective, and both involve images.Nowadays, radiology has been successfully transformed into filmless field in most parts of the world.It is now the turn of histopathology to convert into slideless arena and the change is on the horizon.Digital pathology (DP) is defined as the practice of pathology using digital images of whole microscopic sections on computers rather than under the microscopes as is done in traditional histopathology, such that computers serve, as workstations for pathologists.[2][3][4] It has become possible in recent years by the development of whole-slide imaging (WSI) scanners, which capture high--resolution images of microscopic sections at a very high speed and at high magnification.They transform the glass slides into digital slides, which are immediately archived in computer systems and made accessible to all concerned.The digital slides can be efficiently stored, accessed, analysed, retrieved and shared with pathologists or scientists from across the world via internet, using slide viewing and management softwares.In DP, the glass slides are prepared in much the same way as in conventional microscopy; but instead of examining the slides under a microscope, the slides are visualised on a computer screen.