The Daily Scan

AFIP Director's Message: The Joint Pathology Center A New Beginning

A repository for bottle monsters (the unofficial blog for the National Museum of Health and Medicine) posted this AFIP Director's Message: The Joint Pathology Center A New Beginning.

As most of you know, the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) directed the Department of Defense to establish a Joint Pathology Center (JPC) that would provide diagnostic pathology services; pathology training; pathology research; and would modernize and update AFIP's current Tissue Repository, as long as creating such a center would be consistent with the final recommendations of the 2005 Defense Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission. The Commission, as I'm sure you recall, had recommended disestablishment of the AFIP.

I can now report to you that the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs has concluded that a Joint Pathology Center can indeed be established in DoD and still meet the requirements spelled out by both the BRAC Commission and the 2008 NDAA. I can further report that implementation plans are now being finalized to establish the Joint Pathology Center as part of the new Walter Reed National Military
Medical Center.

...

Unfortunately digital pathology is not mentioned - more education is called for!  Seems as if the JPC could be a leader in using digital pathology to provide distributed services, such as access to the archived tissue bank...

George Palade dies...

The Scientist notes George Palade dies: The cell biologist discovered the ribosome and other cell components, earning him a Nobel, a Lasker, and a National Medal of Science.

Palade was born in 1912, in Moldavia, Romania...  He went to medical school and, despite a strong interest in microscopy, completed his training as a medical doctor...  In 1946, Palade met Albert Claude, the Nobel-winning biologist who pioneered the technique of cell fractionation, and was one of the early users of electron microscopy.  Claude invited Palade to join him at Rockefeller University.

During the next 27 years at Rockefeller, Palade began uncovering the secrets of the cell.  Using the electron microscope, he defined the structure of mitochondria and visualized small components of cytoplasm, later called ribosomes.  This pioneering work won him the Nobel Prize in 1974.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Palade expanded his work, and proved Claude's theory that the microsomes identified in cell fractionation were fragments of the endoplasmic reticulum.

Palade received a Lasker Award in 1966 and the National Medal of Science in 1986.

According to the ISI database, he is the author of 325 papers and has been cited more than 45,200 times.  His most highly cited paper, on electron microscopy in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, is cited more than 3,300 times.

A true pioneer and incredible contributor to modern understanding of cell biology, he will be missed.

Storing Whole Slide Images in DICOM

Many of you regularly read Keith Kaplan's fine Digital Pathology Blog, but in case you don't, Keith has posted an article I've written there about Storing Whole Slide Images in DICOM.

I'm a member of DICOM Working Group 26, which is working to create a standard for storing Whole Slide Images.  The article recaps the key challenges, the proposed solution which addresses the challenges (summarized by the diagram below), and the current state of the solution.

Anyway please read the article, and feel free to comment here if you have questions or suggestions.  You can also send me email to ole@aperio.com.

 

Putting digital slides in your web pages

Have you ever wanted to put a digital slide in your web page?  Not a piece of a slide, but a whole slide?  Well, one of the cool things you can do with Aperio's WebScope viewer is to embed it in your web page.  Anyone can do this, anywhere, for free!  (As long as the slide is hosted on an Aperio Spectrum system somewhere, such as our slidehosting.com service.)

Here's an example:

How easy is this to do?  Well, just copy the following JavaScript and HTML into your web page at the point where you want the slide to be displayed:

<script type="text/javascript">
var vwidth, vheight, nx, ny, nwidth, nheight, zoom;

vwidth = 450;   // set width of viewing window
vheight = 350;   // set height of viewing window 
nwidth = Math.round(vwidth / 3);
nheight = Math.round(vheight / 3);
nx = vwidth - nwidth - 5 - 1;
ny = 5;
zoom = -1;

awvhost="images2.aperio.com"; // set server with image
awvimage="Derm1.svs";  // set image name
awviewer="html/awv.swf";

awvvars = "awvImagePath=AWVIMAGE.apr&awvX=0.0&awvY=0.0&awvZoom=ZOOM&awvToolbar=1&awvNavWindow=1&awvSlider=1&awvGetURLBtn=0&awvAppMag=20&awvNavX=NX&awvNavY=NY&awvNavWidth=NWIDTH&awvNavHeight=NHEIGHT&awvHideAnnotations=";

function setDim(html) {
 html = html.replace("AWVVARS", awvvars);
 html = html.replace("AWVIMAGE", "http://"+awvhost+"/"+awvimage);
 html = html.replace("AWVIEWER", "http://"+awvhost+"/"+awviewer);
 html = html.replace("VWIDTH", vwidth);
 html = html.replace("VHEIGHT", vheight);
 html = html.replace("NX", nx);
 html = html.replace("NY", ny);
 html = html.replace("NWIDTH", nwidth);
 html = html.replace("NHEIGHT", nheight);
 html = html.replace("ZOOM", zoom);
 document.write(html);
 }
</script>

<table style="border: solid 2px black" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td>

<script type=text/javascript>setDim('<object id="theMovie" width=VWIDTH height=VHEIGHT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="src" value="AWVIEWER"><param name="FlashVars" value="AWVVARS">')</script>

<script type=text/javascript>setDim('<embed name="theMovie" width=VWIDTH height=VHEIGHT src="AWVIEWER" FlashVars="AWVVARS" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash">')</script>

</embed>
</object>

</td></tr></table>

There are only two things to set, the dimensions of the viewing window, and the server name and image file where the image is located (highlighted in blue above).

Please try it - nothing makes a point in pathology like a digital slide!

Zakopane hospital installs Aperio’s scanner

I have a Google Alert set for news of Aperio, and every once in a while it drags in something pretty cool, check this out: Zakopane hospital installs Aperio’s scanner.

2008-09-24
Zakopane hospital installs Aperio’s scanner  

The Sokolowski Lung Disease Provincial Hospital in Zakopane (Malopolskie voivodship) has become the first medical institution in Poland to have at its disposal Aperio’s ScanScope, a state-of-the-art scanner system for delivering digital slide images from microscopic slides.

The system, bought for about €100,000, will greatly improve and accelerate pathological diagnosis in patients awaiting surgery as well as intraoperative diagnosis in patients undergoing surgery. It is also a way to deal with a shortage of pathologists. According to Julian Pankowski MD, a pathologist who works part-time for the hospital, it will lift the unit's services to world-class level.

Similar devices are used by institutions in Krakow and Szczecin but only for academic purposes.

I love it!  Digital pathology is truly taking off - globally!