Digital Pathology, Pathologists, and the "Soft Copy Read"

A reader of Lab Soft News has suggested that it would be useful if pathologists were to adopt the phrase soft copy read as part of the ongoing discussion about digital pathology. The term is in common usage among radiologists. Digital pathology, of course, refers to the process by which the images obtained from fixed stained paraffin sections of tissue are converted to digital format, interpreted by pathologists, and then stored. Soft copy read refers specifically to the rendering of a diagnosis from an image displayed on a monitor without the creation of a hardcopy image as an intermediate step. Radiologists, of course, have a history prior to the development of digital radiology of "reading" a hardcopy film copy of the image.

The use of this phrase may be useful because the term digital pathology is often used to describe the entire digital pathology process. I can see the value of teasing out individual steps and assigning them specific names. I personally was initially confused by the use of term soft copy read because pathologists have never made use of a hard copy like radiologists. In other words, this intermediate step has never really existed for pathologists other than in the occasional post-diagnostic step of integrating one or more images of a lesion in the printed report sent to the test-ordering clinician. 

Having said this and not being sure that the use of the term soft copy read will gain currency among pathologists and digital pathology experts, I do understand the value of its use. In my subsequent notes on this topic, I will try to make it a practice to use this term and we will see if it has staying power.

Comments

[Barbara]

Don't limit the phr images obtained from fixed stained paraffin sections of tissue are converted to digital format since we are digitizing and reviewing peripheral smears, bone marrow smears, PAPs, etc.

[Lance]

Perhaps a more applicable term would center around the ild of: 'digital diagnosis' or 'z-view diagnosis'. Note, in both terms, inclusion of the term 'diagnosis' implies that the final decision/ diagnosis rendered was made using the preceding word's methodology. For the two (off the cuff) terms - 'digital diagnosis' would imply / mean that the diangosis was made using a digital display, and the latter incorporates the fact that the digital scanner incorporates a z-plane. Granted, with the latter term, a 'z-plane' is technically a component of glass slides as well, though we often don't think of it in such terms.

moreover, this renders an interesting question regarding terminology and nomenclature. One factor not fleshed out in this post is the permanent inclusion of a term (such as 'glass diagnosis' or 'glass review') that details / parallels the 'hard copy', e.g. glass in the world of pathology. Perhaps the term 'tissue diagnosis' remains correct, but it greatly generalizes things and may become akin to saying a clinical diagnosis was made...a term that, in actuality, fails to convey any methodology used, but rather is a generalized 'waste basket' term.