INTRODUCTION
To begin with, digital pathology encompasses the accession, administration, sharing and interpretation of the information of pathology.
It comprises slides as well as data in the digital arena. These slides are formulated after capturing a glass slide with a scanning device. The purpose is to give an image (digital) with high-resolution and can easily be seen on screens of computer or mobile. The practice of pathology from afar or from a certain distance is known as telepathology.
The technology of telecommunication is used for the facilitation of transmitting pathological data between two destinations or two regions for diagnoses and research (education included).
WHAT IS DIGITAL PATHOLOGY?
Digital pathology is an environment, as dynamic as it can get, which is specifically image-based. It allows the understanding of pathology information which is developed from a digital slide. Healthcare applications encompass primary diagnosis, intraoperative diagnosis, diagnostic consultation, medical student and resident training, clinical research and so on.
We know that the applications of life sciences comprise quantitative analysis of the entire slide images, instant consultations (web-based) from experts and much more. Digital pathology has been substantiated to be an impending and vital technology.
It provides support, particularly for education, tissue-based research, the development of drugs and medicines, and human pathology practice throughout the globe.
It is extensively devoted to the curtailing of costs that go in the laboratory. It also strives for a modification of operational efficiency, an increase in productivity and better care of the patients.
TELEPATHOLOGY
To understand and perform telepathology, it is the pathologist’s prerogative to select the video images that are to be analyzed for further diagnosis.
The use of television microscopy was much before the advent of telepathology and it did not demand a pathologist’s concern or involvement in the selection of microscopic fields of view for diagnosis.
Telepathology has been utilized without fail for numerous favours. The list is endless.
Telepathology provided histopathology tissue diagnoses from afar.
ADVANTAGES OF DIGITAL PATHOLOGY
Digital pathology offers many advantages and benefits. It helps to manoeuvre the practice in a well-adopted fashion and strives for it to find a home in all lab settings.
Digital pathology is responsible for an enhancement in analysis. It also gives algorithms that can be put in use for automated slide analysis. It is, thus, highly accurate.
The utilization of digital pathology is something that self explains the facts of fewer errors and mistakes. The mistakes are less in number such as miss identification etc.
FEATURES OF DIGITAL PATHOLOGY
The basic features of digital pathology are:
- Storage and interoperability
- System and data reliability
- Image life-cycle management and costs
- Enterprise network considerations.
They are talked about in detail, below.
STORAGE:
An intensive GB connection is essential between the scanner and the digital pathology technical setup. This holds for a digital pathology set up with slide scanners. To make sure of the fact that the data is stored repetitively and redundantly, it would be the best alternative to configure storage in repetition. Let us say for instance that the size of the image is as high as 200 MB. The disk storage of a single TB will hold more or less 3500 digital slides after configuration in RAID 6. The storage arena must support streaming the image at all costs. Also, to recover any data in certain circumstances, disaster recovery can be implemented.
SYSTEM AND DATA RELIABILITY: There must be extensive reliability in data transmission as well as storage. In a failsafe manner, the image data can be correlated with metadata.
If there comes a situation when a failure in the system is experienced, the facility of recovery and recreation of the relation between the image and the metadata must be there.
It is very essential to have a vivid distinction between the management of image access and the storing of images. Repetition is highly critical on these grounds.
IMAGE LIFE-CYCLE MANAGEMENT:
We must understand that all images are not necessary to store for the long run. It is important to have certain enterprise rules for storing images for the facilitation of system efficiency and keeping expenses manageable.
ENTERPRISE NETWORKS:
The utilization of images occurring within the enterprise is heavily dependent and conditional on the network bandwidth. It is recommended to have a 100 Mbps system for best performance.
Therefore, there might be some complicatedness and complexity in file formats as well as image metadata in the research arena. There is a standardised requirement for publication-quality images.
CONCLUSION
From the above discussions, we can say that digital pathology, in a world as technically sound as of today, is heavily beneficial for medical students as well as residents. It offers several features like Storage and interoperability, System and data reliability, Image life-cycle management and costs, Enterprise network considerations and so on. digital pathology encompasses the accession, administration, sharing and interpretation of the information of pathology.