Digital Pathology

The Digital Pathology Project is a joint venture between Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and the University of Leeds.

Digital Pathology and whole slide imaging - the complete digitisation of slides - has the potential to transform the practice of diagnostic Pathology just as Radiology has been revolutionised by the introduction of digital imaging over the past 30 years with a resulting improvement in quality and safety of reporting, and innovation in the analysis and manipulation of radiological images.

So called "virtual slides" are enormous digital images produced by scanning glass slides at very high resolution (200,000 dots per inch). The resulting images are gigapixels in size - far larger than images taken by even the best digital cameras. Digital Pathology promises significant benefits in the delivery of patient care. For example:

• Previous slides can easily be accessed when they are needed, rather than having to be retrieved from the archive

• In a fully digital workflow with manual patient identification steps removed, the risk of getting slides mixed up so that a patient receives the wrong diagnosis (something that happens rarely but can have serious consequences when it does) is significantly reduced

• Out of hours services and specialist second opinion services can be created, enabling patients to receive an expert decision more quickly

Further information can be found on the University of Leeds Virtual Pathology page.