Digital-Pathology-Today

The technology in digital pathology has been with us for some time. It now, though, seems we've hit an inflection point and things are accelerating. Perhaps we are even in the perfect storm. There seems to be a certain sense of inevitability and it may be time to open the floodgates and release the promise of digital pathology. Our guests are Colin White - Senior Vice President and General Manager, Advanced Staining & Imaging at Leica Biosystems and Frank Gannon, Professor of Pathology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston Texas. Colin White is an IVD industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in conceiving, developing and commercializing systems that advance the practice of pathology. Colin’s passion is innovation and motivating teams to develop solutions that advance patient care whilst also meeting the needs of healthcare providers and regulating bodies. Dr. Gannon has over 25 years’ experience as a practicing pathologist with subspecialty expertise in Orthopedic Pathology. Prior to joining Baylor College of Medicine in Houston Texas, he spent 8 years at the Armed Forces Institute of pathology in Orthopedic Pathology, 2 years as chair of the department. Dr. Gannon is co-author on an Orthopedic Pathology book, numerous book chapters, and over 110 publications in peer reviewed journals. We’re going to be talking about the value proposition of digital pathology. What are the challenges to implementation? What’s been holding us back and are these barriers beginning to crumble? What does digital pathology mean for patient involvement? And we're going to be talking about artificial intelligence, machine learning, remote sign out, remote case sharing and what going digital means in terms of workflows for the typical pathology department.

Our guest is Esther Abels, Chief Clinical Officer and Chief Regulatory Officer at Visiopharm, as well as the president-elect of the Digital Pathology Association. Esther also leads the regulatory and standards task force at the DPA with a focus on FDA collaborations to drive regulatory and standard classifications for interoperability and computational pathology in the field of digital pathology. We're going to be talking about standardization in digital pathology - not only in preanalytical factors such as fixation and staining - but also in the interpretive or analytic component, as well which is becoming increasingly important to ensure optimal diagnostic results for patients and incorporation of digital pathology data into diagnostic and drug discovery programs. We discuss regulation. What are some misconceptions about regulation how can we use regulation as a tool to protect patients and better develop and provide products and services? And how can we partner with regulators to help advance the science. What is the DPA working on now and what is their long-term vision for the future of the field? The annual meeting of the Digital Pathology Association, Pathology Visions is going to be held this October in Las Vegas.

Is your lab or institution ready for a disaster? Dr. Elizabeth Neyens has over 15 years of experience in translational drug development and has held various staff pathology positions in contract research organizations, the pharmaceutical industry and as well as research institutes worldwide. Dr. Neyens currently supports academia, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies with a variety of nonclinical services at Flanders ToxPath Consulting. She is an active scientist on social media and keeps a blog and has been a regular on podcasts about Pathology & Toxicology. We are talking about preparing your disaster plan in digital pathology. What is data Integrity and why is it important? How do we keep our data safe? What types of threats do we face in the areas of drug development and digital pathology? We talk about cloud computing - the bad, the good and the ugly. And how can we prepare for the unexpected such as climate disasters and pandemics where stakeholders are suddenly shifted from an office environment to working from home?

With digital pathology, we are utilizing new methods to view images acquired from a very old technology - Hematoxylin and Eosin stained sections from formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissue, which have been prepared the same way for over 100 years. This method actually adds steps, time and expense. But what if we could also reinvent the way we handle tissue to instantaneously view images from samples without having to process to fix and process them in the traditional way? Can we move beyond paraffin? David Tulman is a biomedical engineer, cancer researcher, and entrepreneur. He earned a PhD in Bioinnovation from Tulane University, focusing on the development of novel microscopy systems for point-of-care pathology evaluations. David is a founder of Instapath, a company that formed in 2017 to build and commercialize systems that image pathology tissue without fixing or cutting. Instapath operates out of the Texas Medical Center in Houston. Instapath introduces an innovative solution utilizing optical scanning microscopy to evaluate the composition of the entire fresh sample within minutes at the point-of-procedure and preserve it for downstream testing. David is also the host of beyond the scope of the podcast from the digital pathology association will talk to him about that as well as the upcoming DPA annual meeting, Pathology Visions, this October in Las Vegas.

Our Guest is John Waller, PhD, Chief Operations Officer & Founder of Oracle Bio. John has over of 15 years as a biology project leader in the pharmaceutical industry, for companies including AstraZeneca and Merck & Co. He has expertise in the integration of translational biomarkers into drug discovery programs and considerable experience in developing in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo models involving image analysis across numerous therapeutic areas. OracleBio is a global leader in quantitative digital pathology, providing image analysis services to Pharma and Biotech clients worldwide. Leveraging multiple software platforms, the company delivers robust data packages within a quality management framework to support clinical trials and translational research. As image analysis experts, OracleBio specializes in cellular phenotyping of multiplex stained tissue and has built a strong reputation as the go-to company for complex image analysis. Their mission is to enhance decision making within R&D by leveraging Digital Pathology to deliver robust data and actionable insights. We are talking about the role of digital pathology in drug development and drug discovery. What are machine learning and deep learning? How are they different from artificial intelligence? And what role do they play in image analysis and digital pathology? How is Multiplexing evolving, what are its limits and how is it going to change what we do? What is the need for cloud computing in digital pathology? What are the advantages and disadvantages of putting our data and processes into the cloud?

One of the missing links in this digital transformation has been robust platforms for pathologists to interact with one another to share images and cases. KIKO, which stands for “knowledge in, knowledge out” is a slide hosting and sharing platform with many uses, including education, case and other content sharing, the ability to consult with colleagues, and even storing your own cases for later retrieval. Sites like KIKO help to democratize pathology and knowledge, which has been one of the key themes of this digital transformation. It also serves to enhance the careers of individual pathologists. Dr. Jonhan Ho is the Director of the Dermatopathology Division and the Fellowship Director at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Throughout his career, he has trained hundreds of pathology and dermatology residents, and dermatopathology fellows. Having experienced the joy of teaching but also the frustrations of institutional silos, he founded KiKo, to democratize medical training and teaching in an easy-to-use platform. His hope is that through KiKo, doctors can begin to take back medical knowledge instantly and privately in order to make each other better.

We're talking with Leo Grady, CEO of Paige, a company developing AI-based solutions in digital pathology to optimize patient outcomes. We're going to be talking about his experiences in diagnostics, radiology, pathology, and artificial intelligence. We’ll discuss the early history of Paige, its relationship with memorial Sloan Kettering, what products Paige is developing, what the future holds, and their strategy for developing partnerships. It’s often said that radiology is at least a decade ahead of pathology in terms of going digital. But is this accurate or fair? Radiology images, after all are digitally native whereas pathology images are not. What do we mean by digitally native? What do we mean by AI native? is it possible to create an AI native environment for digital pathology?

The College of American Pathologists (CAP), in collaboration with the ASCP and API announced the 2021 update of guidelines for Validating Whole Slide Imaging (WSI) for diagnostic Purposes. We talk with Andrew Evans, MD, PhD, Chair of The Digital and Computational Pathology Committee and Nicole Thomas, MPH, Director of the CAP Center for Evidence Based Guidelines.

Dennis Strenk is the host of the People of Pathology Podcast and Pathologists’ Assistant at the Wisconsin Diagnostic Laboratories. Dennis has created a unique podcast to get to know the people in pathology , to understand their motivations, and to hear their stories and learn from their insights. We talk with him about the origins of the People of Pathology Podcast, lessons learned and the surprises along the way. In addition, we talk about digital pathology, gross specimen handling and imaging and how new technologies such as digital pathology can enhance workflows.

This episode we speak with Dr. Michael Johnson of Visikol. We will discuss 3D imaging in digital pathology. We will look at the current and future uses of 3D imaging. What is the current state of the art in multiplexing - particularly for clinical use. We will find out more about organoids, what they are and what role they play in research and finally, what Visikol has in store for the future.