Digital Pathology Showcase; Value of Awards for Selected System Metrics

I recently posted a note about a digital pathology industry panel discussion that will take place at Pathology Informatics 2011 (see: Digital Pathology Showcase; Industry Discussion Panel at Pathology Informatics 2011). The conference is rapidly approaching. It will be held on October 4-7, 2011, in Pittsburgh. This panel discussion will focus on the "rules of engagement" that will govern the actual Digital Pathology Showcase that will take place at Pathology Informatics 2012 (Chicago, October 9-12, 2012). You can review the draft document that the panel will be discussing. Dr. Mike Becich, who is the co-director of this conference, posted a comment to my recent post, which I will now upgrade to a note because of its importance:

A question the vendors who were interviewed for the 2012 Digital Pathology Industry Showcase have posed is should there be an award or some framework of a "contest" like in the European Scanner Contest in 2010. Some suggested awards for "best software", "best image quality", "best workflow" and others suggested metrics that would measure speed of acquisition of images, time to diagnosis and GUI (graphical user interface) quality measures. What do you think about this approach?

The 2012 Digital Pathology Showcase will be organized as a set of vendor demonstrations of end-to-end processing starting with whole-slide-imaging (WSI) of standard slides and ending with the generation of a final surgical pathology report by a pathologist. Multiple companies will be invited to participate. Mike is posing the question to readers of Lab Soft News whether there should be "best in show" categorical metrics introduced into the Showcase that will be decided upon by a panel of expert pathologists. You can use the "comment" button to respond.

Comments

[Joseph Stabile]

Hi Bruce,
I wanted to respond to the question you posed about the awards/contest for PI-2012

We discussed amoung ourselves and feel that it might be difficult to come up with standards for these awards.

As an example, while we are not a WSI vendor, we allow access to this technology through our application. Items that might influence a vote are physical conditions of the venue, for example, speed of aquistion of images might be dependant upon the quality of the internet connection furnished by the hotel vs. having the technology on site. You also mentioned quality of image. Again this could be dependant upon the type of monitor that is utilized and all vendors might not deploy a diagnostic qulaity monitor in a vendor fair environment.

Just some food for thought.

Thanks,

Joe