Digital pathology is close to our heart, and we have been lucky to speak with some of the field’s best and brightest figures. That’s why today we’re digging into the archives to deliver you a healthy dose of digital pathology interviews to enjoy. We have handpicked five of our favorite interviews from the flourishing field – one for each year from 2019 to 2023. Enjoy!
Revamping the Digital Interface
In 2019, we joined David Wilbur, Former Director of Cytopathology and Clinical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and current Chief Medical Scientist at Corista LLC to reflect on the slow uptake of digital pathology in the US.
“I believe that one of the main things holding back the adoption of digital pathology is the poor user interface between the pathologist and the viewing station – something that I have been trying to address over the last 15 years. As the product of over a century of development and fine-tuning, the microscope is exceedingly efficient and ergonomic for the user, and this is difficult to replicate in digital viewing systems.”
Paving the Computational Path
Back in 2020, we sat down with Nasir Rajpoot, co-director of the PathLAKE Consortium, Professor of Computational Pathology at the University of Warwick, and Honorary Scientist at the Department of Pathology, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, Coventry to discuss his future hopes for PathLAKE – a national center of excellence for artificial intelligence in pathology for researchers.
“A unique aspect of PathLAKE is that it not only allows you to access data for research and AI innovation purposes, it features an in-lake central analytics engine to allow you to conduct experiments within the data lake; for example, if you don’t have sufficient computational resources or storage.”
The Digital Pioneer
We sat down with Rajendra Singh, Professor of Pathology and Dermatology, Director of Dermatopathology, and Associate Chair of Digital Pathology at Northwell Health, New York, in 2021 to discuss his educational, image-sharing platform – PathPresenter.
“We built a platform in which we could put the slides on the cloud, have the back-end software convert them into a single format, and then make them available on a single viewer. At first, it was just for our own use – so that we could use these digital slides for teaching – but, when other people saw the platform, they told us it was the sort of resource they had always needed.”
A Unique Perspective
Last year, we chatted with Sylvia Asa, Consultant in Endocrine Pathology, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center and University Health Network (Toronto) and Professor of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio about Digital Pathology Connections – a network for all to learn and overcome challenges in the digital pathology space.
“Originally, it was only open to pathologists, but we have realized that we can’t do this alone. We need collaborators, so now pathologists and anyone supporting them can join free of charge.”
The Place Maker
Most recently, we spoke to Aleksandra Zuraw, Veterinary Pathologist at Charles River Laboratories, Fairfield, Pennsylvania, about her blog, The Digital Pathology Place, where she aims to bridge the gap between computer scientists and pathologists. Read on to find out what she thinks about social media as an educational platform, and what her biggest lessons she's learned throughout her career are…
“A pathologist is not always right! During education, there is always somebody to look up to in your niche, but when you step out of this circle and into full-time work, you are regarded as the expert. I was the only full-time pathologist at the first company I worked at. Going from the lowest to the highest step of the ladder was a fantastic feeling, but I soon realized that I was not familiar with the digital pathology and image analysis pipeline – for example, the technological aspects or the computer vision parts.”
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