Thoughts on How Digital Pathology Will Usher in New Era of Personalized Medicine

Dr. Joseph Krueger over at his Instablog has some interesting comments concerning digital pathology and personalized medicine. 

He writes "This new technology, whole slide imaging, or digital pathology, is moving pathology closer towards an electronic science. Radiologists have worked exclusively from digital media for years, but pathology is just now moving in this direction. The entire tissue section on the glass slide is scanned in a high-throughput scanner, made by established digital pathology companies like Aperio, Bioimagene, Zeiss, and Hamamatsu, or newer entrants with even faster scanning technologies like Leica, Philips, and GE’s Omnyx subsidiary. The pathologist can now read and diagnose from a computer screen, eliminating the need to ship glass slides around during clinical trials. More importantly, the pathologist can run computer image analysis across the tissue section, generating quantitative information highly useful in the development of a companion diagnostics program. This methodology not only speeds up the pathological assessment process, reducing cost, it provides the means for a rapid and inexpensive companion diagnostic based on the “gold standard” assessment of pathology."

Who could disagree with that?  I think Dr. Krueger touches on one of the many values of digital pathology; the power of image analysis with a digital data set, a real advantage over analog review alone. 

The post provides interesting background and further discussion that is worth checking out:

Digital Pathology Will Usher in New Era of Personalized Medicine