Offline telepathology diagnosis of colorectal polyps: a study of interobserver agreement and comparison with glass slide diagnoses

Abstract

Background/Aims: Technological advances have produced telepathology systems with high quality colour images and reasonable transmission times. Most applications of telepathology have centred on the remote diagnosis of frozen sections or remote real time expert opinions. This study investigates the reproducibility and accuracy of offline telepathology as a primary diagnostic medium for routine histopathology specimens. Methods: One hundred colorectal polyps (50 hyperplastic, 50 adenomatous) were presented in a randomised order to five histopathologists as offline images on a telepathology workstation. Six images of each case were used: the slide label, a low power scan of all material on the slide, and four higher magnification views. The times taken to prepare the images, and to make the diagnoses, were recorded. Interobserver agreement was measured with κ statistics and compared with the glass slide diagnoses. Results: The κ statistics for the interobserver agreement on the telepathology images lay in the range of 0.90-1.00, which is interpreted as excellent agreement, and were significantly higher than those for the glass slide diagnoses (range, 0.84-0.98; p = 0.001). The median time taken to capture the images for a case was 210 seconds. The median time taken to make a diagnosis from the telepathology images was five seconds, which was significantly shorter than for the glass slide diagnoses (median, 13 seconds; p < 0.0005). Conclusions: Offline telepathology has the potential to be a primary diagnostic medium for routine histopathology with a high degree of reproducibility and short diagnosis times. Further studies are required to validate offline telepathology for different types of specimens and different operators of the image capture system.

Assessment of diagnostic accuracy and feasibility of dynamic telepathology in China

“…The discordance rate ranged from 3% to 8.4%. These results are consistent with previous reports that have estimated the accuracy of telepathologic diagnosis as between 91% and 100% [9][10][11][12][13][14]. There was no significant difference in telepathology and light microscopy diagnoses-the concordance rate for the 2 was almost the same (the mean ratio of correct diagnosis achieved by telepathology and conventional microscopy among the 4 pathologist was 99.26%).…”

A feasibility study of virtual slides in surgical pathology in China

“…In this study, the diagnostic accuracy for 2 pathologists using virtual slides was 95.5% (382 of 400) and 94.75% (379 of 400). These results were in line with previous reports of accuracy for diagnoses using other telepathology systems, which ranged from 88.5% to 100% [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. At the same time, intraobserver diagnostic reproducibility was acceptable.…”

Histological Assessment of Gonads in DSD: Relevance for Clinical Management

“…Overall, diagnostic accuracy of static image telepathology has been reviewed numerous times in different studies and results range from 68-100%, with improving figures over the years [Della Mea et al, 1996;Weinberg et al, 1996;Halliday et al, 1997;Dunn et al, 1999;Williams et al, 2001;Cross et al, 2002;Nordrum et al, 2004]. Static image telepathology is an accessible technique that can also be used in developing countries.…”