Telepathology: assessment of the implications and applications of telepathology for practical diagnostic pathology.

Sowter, C.; Wells, Clive

doi:10.1136/jcp.51.10.714

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…11 12 Histopathologists in our present and previous studies appear to confirm such beliefs. 13 ''Even if they are capable of capturing high quality digital images, many histopathologists appear unable to use these data for further applications''…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The use of digital imaging, video conferencing, and telepathology in histopathology: a national survey

Dennis

Start²,

Cross³

2005

J Clin Pathol

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Aims:To undertake a large scale survey of histopathologists in the UK to determine the current infrastructure, training, and attitudes to digital pathology.Methods:A postal questionnaire was sent to 500 consultant histopathologists randomly selected from the membership of the Royal College of Pathologists in the UK.Results:There was a response rate of 47%. Sixty four per cent of respondents had a digital camera mounted on their microscope, but only 12% had any sort of telepathology equipment. Thirty per cent used digital images in electronic presentations at meetings at least once a year and only 24% had ever used telepathology in a diagnostic situation. Fifty nine per cent had received no training in digital imaging. Fifty eight per cent felt that the medicolegal implications of duty of care were a barrier to its use. A large proportion of pathologists (69%) were interested in using video conferencing for remote attendance at multidisciplinary team meetings.Conclusions:There is a reasonable level of equipment and communications infrastructure among histopathologists in the UK but a very low level of training. There is resistance to the use of telepathology in the diagnostic context but enthusiasm for the use of video conferencing in multidisciplinary team meetings.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The use of digital imaging, video conferencing, and telepathology in histopathology: a national survey

Dennis

Start²,

Cross³

2005

J Clin Pathol

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“…[1][2][3] It is now possible to view high quality real time colour images and to control all aspects of a robotic microscope at a remote location. 4 With the availability of usable telepathology systems there is a need to research the uses that can be made of such systems and the human factors that are important in their use.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Cross¹,

Burton²,

Dube³

et al. 2002

Journal of Clinical Pathology

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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.

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“…Although the need for telepathology is well established, the demand for high-quality image capture devices and efficient transmission has, until now, inhibited the widespread use of telepathology by individual pathologists. However, the need to transfer images and video across the ever-expanding Internet has resulted in more affordable means for capturing and delivering high quality digital images across standard telecommunications links [4][5][6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

<title>Application of content-based image compression to telepathology</title>

Varga

Ducksbury

Callagy

2002

Medical Imaging 2002: Visualization, Image-Guided Procedures, and Display

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Telepathology is a means of practicing pathology at a distance, viewing images on a computer display rather than directly through a microscope. Without compression, images take too long to transmit to a remote location and are very expensive to store for future examination. However, to date the use of compressed images in pathology remains controversial. This is because commercial image compression algorithms such as JPEG achieve data compression without knowledge of the diagnostic content. Often images are lossily compressed at the expense of corrupting informative content.None of the currently available lossy compression techniques are concerned with what information has been preserved and what data has been discarded. Their sole objective is to compress and transmit the images as fast as possible. By contrast, this paper presents a novel image compression technique, which exploits knowledge of the slide diagnostic content. This 'content based' approach combines visually lossless and lossy compression techniques, judiciously applying each in the appropriate context across an image so as to maintain 'diagnostic' information while still maximising the possible compression. Standard compression algorithms, e.g. wavelets, can still be used, but their use in a context sensitive manner can offer high compression ratios and preservation of diagnostically important information. When compared with lossless compression the novel content-based approach can potentially provide the same degree of information with a smaller amount of data. When compared with lossy compression it can provide more information for a given amount of compression. The precise gain in the compression performance depends on the application (e.g. database archive or second opinion consultation) and the diagnostic content of the images.

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Telepathology: assessment of the implications and applications of telepathology for practical diagnostic pathology.

Cited by 13 publications

References 2 publications

The use of digital imaging, video conferencing, and telepathology in histopathology: a national survey

The use of digital imaging, video conferencing, and telepathology in histopathology: a national survey

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

<title>Application of content-based image compression to telepathology</title>

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