Digital pathology
Sub-field of pathology using digitized slides for analysis and diagnosis.
Digital pathology is a branch of pathology concerned with handling and interpreting data from digitized tissue slides. It relies on computer-based systems and virtual microscopy to display, organize, share, and examine these digital slides on screens. Its uses include diagnostic medicine, and it seeks to make diagnoses, prognoses, and disease predictions more efficient and cost-effective by leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence in healthcare.
The field began with telepathology experiments in the 1960s. Virtual microscopy as a concept emerged in the 1990s across several life science disciplines. Around the year 2000, the scientific community broadly adopted the term "digital pathology" to describe these digitization efforts. At that time, however, technical limitations—such as scanners, storage, and network capacity—restricted widespread use. This changed as more powerful, affordable scanners and mass or cloud storage became available. Radiology underwent its own digital shift nearly 15 years earlier, not because it is more advanced, but due to fundamental differences in imaging. In radiology, the image source is the living patient, and images are usually captured digitally from the start. In pathology, scanning is done from preserved, processed specimens, or even from archived slides in a biobank for retrospective studies. Beyond these differences in pre-analytics and metadata, digital pathology requires two to three orders of magnitude more storage than radiology. Still, the expected benefits mirror those of radiology: the ability to transmit digital slides quickly over distances, enabling telepathology; easier access to past specimens from the same patient or similar cases for comparison, without retrieving physical slides; the ability to view different areas of multiple slides side-by-side using a virtual microscope; and the ability to annotate slides directly and share those annotations for teaching and research. Currently, digital pathology is mainly used for education, telepathology, teleconsultation, and research. It allows sharing and annotating slides, as well as downloading annotated lecture sets for e-learning. Its use in diagnostics is still emerging.
Digital slides are created from glass slides using specialized scanners. High-quality scans must be free of dust, scratches, and other obstructions.
- Field
- Pathology
- Known for
- Digitization of specimen slides for remote diagnosis, analysis, and education
- Key technology
- Whole-slide images (WSIs), virtual microscopy, machine learning
- First telepathology experiments
- 1960s
- Term coined
- Around 2000
Lore & Background
The roots of digital pathology trace back to the 1960s with early telepathology experiments. The concept of virtual microscopy emerged in the 1990s across various areas of life science research. At the turn of the century the scientific community more and more agreed on the term 'digital pathology' to denote digitization efforts in pathology. However, in 2000, the technical requirements (scanner, storage, network) were still a limiting factor for a broad dissemination of digital pathology concepts. This changed as new powerful and affordable scanner technology as well as mass/cloud storage technologies appeared on the market.
Reader's Guide
Digital pathology represents a significant shift in how pathological specimens are examined and shared. Unlike radiology, where images are often primarily captured in digital format from living patients, digital pathology involves scanning preserved and processed specimens from glass slides. The required storage for digital pathology is two to three orders of magnitude higher than in radiology. Despite these challenges, the field offers capabilities similar to those in radiology: rapid transmission of digital slides for telepathology, easy access to past specimens for comparison, simultaneous comparison of multiple slide areas, and annotation sharing for teaching and research. Digital pathology is predominantly used for educational purposes, teleconsultation, and research projects, while its use in diagnostics remains an emerging field. The development of both proprietary and interoperable digital slide file formats, such as SVS and NDPI, has implications for interoperability, performance, and long-term data stewardship.
Did You Know?
- Digital slides are created from glass slides using specialized scanning machines, with two common methods: tile-based scanning and line-based scanning.
- Z-stacking is the scanning of a slide at multiple focal planes along the vertical z-axis.
- OpenSeadragon is an example of an open-source, web-based viewer for digital slides implemented in pure JavaScript.
- Virtual histological staining uses trained neural networks to digitally generate histological stains from unstained tissue images.
More in Pathology 1-24
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced