Validation of diagnostic accuracy using digital slides in routine histopathology

Diagnostic Pathology

Béla Molnár¹  Csaba Diczházi²  Júlia Schönléber²  Judit Pápay²  Zoltán Sápi²  Judit Csomor²  Attila Zalatnai²  Péter Nagy²  Tibor Krenács²  László Fónyad² 

[1] Second Department of Internal Medicine, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary;First Department of Pathology and Experimental Cancer Research, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary

关键词: Whole slide imaging;    Optical microscopy;    Diagnostic error;    Surgical pathology;    Retrospective study;   

Others  :  808119
DOI  :  10.1186/1746-1596-7-35

 received in 2012-02-08, accepted in 2012-03-31,  发布年份 2012

【 摘 要 】

Background

Robust hardware and software tools have been developed in digital microscopy during the past years for pathologists. Reports have been advocated the reliability of digital slides in routine diagnostics. We have designed a retrospective, comparative study to evaluate the scanning properties and digital slide based diagnostic accuracy.

Methods

8 pathologists reevaluated 306 randomly selected cases from our archives. The slides were scanned with a 20× Plan-Apochromat objective, using a 3-chip Hitachi camera, resulting 0.465 μm/pixel resolution. Slide management was supported with dedicated Data Base and Viewer software tools. Pathologists used their office PCs for evaluation and reached the digital slides via intranet connection. The diagnostic coherency and uncertainty related to digital slides and scanning quality were analyzed.

Results

Good to excellent image quality of slides was recorded in 96%. In half of the critical 61 digital slides, poor image quality was related to section folds or floatings. In 88.2% of the studied cases the digital diagnoses were in full agreement with the consensus. Out of the overall 36 incoherent cases, 7 (2.3%) were graded relevant without any recorded uncertainty by the pathologist. Excluding the non-field specific cases from each pathologist's record this ratio was 1.76% of all cases.

Conclusions

Our results revealed that: 1) digital slide based histopathological diagnoses can be highly coherent with those using optical microscopy; 2) the competency of pathologists is a factor more important than the quality of digital slide; 3) poor digital slide quality do not endanger patient safety as these errors are recognizable by the pathologist and further actions for correction could be taken.

Virtual slides

The virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/1913324336747310 webcite.

【 授权许可】

   
2012 Fónyad et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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