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Development of Automatic Portable Pathology Scanner and Its Evaluation for Clinical Practice

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Abstract

Digital pathological scanners transform traditional glass slides into whole slide images (WSIs), which significantly improve the efficiency of pathological diagnosis and promote the development of digital pathology. However, the huge economic burden limits the spread and application of general WSI scanners in relatively remote and backward regions. In this paper, we develop an automatic portable cytopathology scanner based on mobile internet, Landing-Smart, to avert the above problems. Landing-Smart is a tiny device with a size of 208 mm × 107 mm × 104 mm and a weight of 1.8 kg, which integrates four main components including a smartphone, a glass slide carrier, an electric controller, and an optical imaging unit. By leveraging a simple optical imaging unit to substitute the sophisticated but complex conventional light microscope, the cost of Landing-Smart is less than $3000, much cheaper than general WSI scanners. On the one hand, Landing-Smart utilizes the built-in camera of the smartphone to acquire field of views (FoVs) in the section one by one. On the other hand, it uploads the images to the cloud server in real time via mobile internet, where the image processing and stitching method is implemented to generate the WSI of the cytological sample. The practical assessment of 209 cervical cytological specimens has demonstrated that Landing-Smart is comparable to general digital scanners in cytopathology diagnosis. Landing-Smart provides an effective tool for preliminary cytological screening in underdeveloped areas.

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Availability of Data and Materials

The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Not applicable.

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Funding

This work was funded by the Major Projects of Technological Innovation in Hubei Province (2019AEA170, 2019ACA161), the Frontier Projects of Wuhan for Application Foundation (2019010701011381), and the Translational Medicine and Interdisciplinary Research Joint Fund of Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University (ZNJC201919).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Artificial Intelligence, National Engineering Research Center for Multimedia Software, School of Computer Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Peng Jiang & Juan Liu

  2. Landing Artificial Intelligence Center for Pathological Diagnosis, Wuhan, China

    Qiang Luo, Baochuan Pang, Di Xiao & Dehua Cao

Authors
  1. Peng Jiang
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  2. Juan Liu
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  3. Qiang Luo
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  4. Baochuan Pang
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  5. Di Xiao
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  6. Dehua Cao
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Contributions

P. J. conceptualized and designed the study, carried out the data analyses, interpreted the results, and drafted the initial manuscript. J. L. carried out the data analysis, supervised the work, and revised and edited the manuscript. D. X., P. P., and D. C. implemented the mobile device and collected the data. Z. H. collected the data and diagnosed the samples. All authors assume public responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of the work.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Juan Liu.

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Ethics Approval

Ethical approval was waived by the local Ethics Committee of Wuhan University in view of the retrospective nature of the study, and all the procedures being performed were part of the routine investigation.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Jiang, P., Liu, J., Luo, Q. et al. Development of Automatic Portable Pathology Scanner and Its Evaluation for Clinical Practice. J Digit Imaging 36, 1110–1122 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-022-00761-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-022-00761-1

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