Ordinal classi¯cation is a form of multiclass classi¯cation for which there is an inherent order between the classes, but not a meaningful numeric di®erence between them. The performance of such classi¯ers is usually assessed by measures appropriate for nominal classes or for regression. Unfortunately, these do not account for the true dimension of the error.The goal of this work is to show that existing measures for evaluating ordinal classi¯cation models su®er from a number of important shortcomings. For this reason, we propose an alternative measure de¯ned directly in the confusion matrix. An error coe±cient appropriate for ordinal data should capture how much the result diverges from the ideal prediction and how \ inconsistent" the classi¯er is in regard to the relative order of the classes. The proposed coe±cient results from the observation that the performance yielded by the Misclassi¯cation Error Rate coe±cient is the bene¯t of the path along the diagonal of the confusion matrix. We carry out an experimental study which con¯rms the usefulness of the novel metric.

The advantages of the digital methodology are well known. In this paper, we provide a detailed description of the process for the digital transformation of the pathology laboratory at IPATIMUP, the major modifications that operate throughout the processing pipeline, and the advantages of its implementation. The model of digital workflow implementation at IPATIMUP demonstrates that careful planning and adoption of simple measures related to time, space, and sample management can be adopted by any pathology laboratory to achieve higher quality and easy digital transformation.

Computer aided diagnosis systems with the capability of automatically decide if a patient has or not a pathology and to hold the decision on the dificult cases, are becoming more frequent. The latter are afterwards reviewed by an expert reducing therefore time consuption on behalf of the expert. The number of cases to review depends on the cost of erring the diagnosis. In this work we analyse the incorporation of the option to hold a decision on the diagnostic of pathologies on the vertebral column. A comparison with several state of the art techniques is performed. We conclude by showing that the use of the reject option techniques is an asset in line with the current view of the research community.