Wrapping up the first day of the Pathology Visions conference in San Diego, there were a ton of great talks, in fact, there were three tracks taking place concurrently, Clinical, Research & Education, and Vet/Tox Path, so it was impossible to see them all. Which ones did I attend? Well, I enjoyed Dr. Keith Kaplan's talk on New Applications in Whole Slide Imaging; if you don't know, in additional to being a staff Pathologist at Mayo Clinic, Keith is proprietor of the Digital Pathology blog.
Dr. Keith Kaplan presents at Pathology Visions (click to enlarge)
Next I attended a great talk by my friend and sometime collaborator Dr. Ulysses Balis, a staff Pathologist and Director of Informatics at the University of Michigan, who talked about Whole Slide Imagery as an enabling Technology for Content Based Image Retrieval. Ul knows more math than most Pathologists, and more Pathology than most Mathematicians, and more about implementing image analysis algorithms than just about anyone. He has developed a novel technique called Spacially Invarient Vector Quantization which has tremendous promise for CBIR as well as various pattern recognition techniques.
Dr. Ulysses Balis speaking at Pathology Visions (click to enlarge)
After lunch Dr. John Spinosa, Chief of Staff and Chairman of Pathology at Scripps Hospital, gave a great talk on Using Digital Pathology for Tumor Boards, describing how Scripps have used Aperio's systems to make preparation for tumor boards more efficient and improving the experience for Pathologists in tumor boards (by giving them more information, and the tools to present it).
Another great session was given by Dr. Keith Cheng, describing his research with Zebrafish and development of the definitive zebrafish atlas (using digital pathology), in a talk called Digital Morphology and its Critical Role in Systems Biology.
And wrapping things up for the first days' presentations, I attended a talk on Multi-site Integration of Digital Pathology: three countries, four time zones, one oncology, given by Dr. Humphrey Gardner and Dr. James Deeds of Novartis. Their work is especially interesting for the innovative ways they've used and enhanced the capabilities of Aperio's Spectrum digital pathology information management system to meet Novartis' challenges.
Then it was time for the highlight of the day; a tour of the U.S.S. Midway aircraft carrier, with a banquet on board to boot.
The dinner banquet on board the U.S.S. Midway! (click to enlarge)
Absolutely amazing, day one was great. Who can say what day two will bring? Stay tuned...
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