The Daily Scan

IHC goes digital

Advance, a magazine for lab administrators, has a nice article by Holger Lange entitled IHC goes digital.

Digitization is revolutionizing medicine; like similar advances in the radiology market, we will see tremendous improvements in workflow efficiency and the emergence of new computer-assisted tools, methods and tests that will help pathologists improve patient care.

Adoption of digital pathology is well under way, with hundreds of systems being deployed in many countries across several segments such as education, research, biopharmaceutical and clinical settings. Adoption also is occurring in niches; immunohistochemistry (IHC) is one of the first adopted digital pathology applications in the clinical market.

A digital pathology solution for IHC consists of:

• a high-quality, high-throughput slide scanner with walk away automation and automated data entry;

• a Web-based pathology Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS) with secure anytime, anywhere access to all case, specimen and slide information;

• slide viewing software;

• a suite of IHC image analysis tools; and

• a reporting tool-all integrated into one clinical workflow.

Digital pathology solutions for IHC help pathologists provide better patient care through more accurate and consistent test results, faster turnaround times and more informed decision making.

You can find out more about Aperio's Digital IHC solution here...

Join Us for the Aperio Digital Pathology Seminar Series!

 

Join Us for the Aperio Digital Pathology Seminar Series!

April 15 | North Carolina Biotechnology Center | Research Triangle Park, NC
April 17 | Hyatt Regency Penn’s Landing | Philadelphia, PA
May 13 | Grand Hyatt San Francisco | San Francisco, CA
May 15 | Crowne Plaza Seattle | Seattle, WA

Digital Pathology Seminars are complimentary. Seminars are held from 8:00 am – 3:30 pm and meals will be provided.

Meet and network with fellow pathologists, histologists, biostatisticians, researchers, informaticians, and biologists to share ideas about implementing digital pathology in drug development, academic, and research environments.

Seminar Topics Include:

• Hands-On Workshop: Slide Scanning 101
• Spectrum Plus: Organizing Your Digital Slides
• Image Analysis: Tools for Analyzing Histology
• Whole Slide Scanning and Fluorescence
• Mouse Pathology in Oncology Research
• Histology Pattern Recognition with Genie
• What's New in Spectrum Plus
• Digital Pathology Applications in Preclinical Drug Development: Toxicity Studies Support and Consultation
• Spectrum Applications: JDRF nPOD Online Pathology Database for a Diabetes Research Network

To RSVP, contact Nicole Siska, Aperio Events Team, at 760.539.1193 or nsiska@aperio.com.

chalk tip #6: view with WebScope from within Spectrum

Did you know?  You can view slides with WebScope from within Spectrum by holding down the W key while clicking thumbnails.  By default Spectrum uses ImageScope if you have it installed, but this way you can use / demo WebScope anyway.  Try it!

chalk tip #5: displaying scale axes and grid

Did you know?  In ImageScope, you can display scale axes and/or a measurement grid overlaid on a digital slide image.

To display axes, go to the ImageScope toolbar and click the show/hide scale axes button, which looks like this:

Click button to toggle axes

The translucent axes will be displayed around the outside of the window:

          The scale of the axes is adjusted as the image is zoomed

To display a measurement grid, select Axes+Grid from the toolbar button’s drop-down menu:

Click button to toggle grid

The measurement grid will be overlaid on the window:

          The scale of the grid is adjusted as the image is zoomed

The grid also works beautifully for fluorescence images:

I find that I leave the axes enabled all the time – they’re useful as well as looking cool :) – and I toggle the grid on whenever I need to estimate the size of objects on a slide.

when the student is ready, the teacher will appear

I’m attending the USCAP conference in Boston – many more pics and a report to follow – but today I was in the Exhibit Hall checking in with the Aperio team getting ready and I saw this poster in the entrance to the CME (continuing medical education) area:

 

How cool is that?  USCAP are using Aperio's technology in their online CME!  And if you visit the URL www.uscapeacademy.org, you’ll find a bunch of electronic case studies, presented with whole slide images using Aperio's ImageScope and WebScope as the viewers!

This is excellent.  I must tell you, it gave me chills when I saw it.  Our vision of transforming pathology is becoming a reality!

Virtual reality powerwall at University of Leeds

Dr. Darren Treaner and his team at the University of Leeds School of Computing have constructed a virtual reality powerwall for viewing digital slides - twenty-eight high-resolution monitors are combined to form one really large really high resolution monitor taking up an entire wall.  The resulting image is over 5 by 3 metres in size, but has the same resolution as a conventional computer screen.  This allows, for example, a whole gastrointestinal biopsy to be seen at once at a resolution which shows every individual cell in detail.

There are a couple of videos on the linked page which show the monitor in action.  Not only is the resolution impressive, but so is the performance; they're pushing a lot of pixels to be able to pan and zoom so smoothly.

How to Make Electronic Medical Records a Reality

The New York Times discusses How to Make Electronic Medical Records a Reality:

In the world of technology, inventors are hailed as heroes. Yet it is more subtle forms of innovation that typically determine the impact of a technology in the marketplace and on society. Clever engineering, smart business models and favorable economics are the key ingredients of widespread adoption and commercial success.

...

Today, Washington is about to embark on an ambitious government-guided effort to jump-start a market — in electronic health records. The program provides a textbook look at the economic and engineering challenges of technology adoption.

In its economic recovery package, the Obama administration plans to spend $19 billion to accelerate the use of computerized medical records in doctors’ offices. Medical experts agree that electronic patient records, when used wisely, can help curb costs and improve care.

And of course as I never tire of pointing out, electronic medical records are going to require digital pathology, as it is the only way of integrating the vital pathology information for a case into an electronic record.

chalk tip #4: adjusting thumbnail display settings

60 pixels                  45 pixels                  30 pixels

Did you know? In Spectrum, you can adjust thumbnail display settings.

Log on to Spectrum as administrator, and then select System Settings from the Administrative menu.  You can configure display settings for slide thumbnails, label images, and macro images; for each you select whether they are displayed, in lists, and on detail pages, and how large they are displayed.  The default size is 60 pixels, but you might want to make them smaller to show more slides when you’re using the system on laptops, etc.  Try it!

FDA application approvals, 2000-2008

Here's an interesting interactive chart showing FDA application approvals from 2008-2008: