LIFE SCIENCES


Turbocharging cell imaging


From speeding up pathology scanning to event-based sensing, there’s plenty of new technology finding its way into life science labs. Rebecca Pool reports


In August 2020, Leica Biosystems E


arlier this year, Frost and Sullivan predicted the global digital pathology market will grow from $513 million in


2019 to $826 million by 2025. Largely fuelled by the drive to boost lab efficiencies and an increasing prevalence of cancer, this 8.2 per cent compound annual growth rate lies on the conservative side of other forecasts, which point to double-digit growth rates and market sizes that reach $1.3 billion by 2028. Double-digit growth or not, these figures


spell good news for manufacturers of hardware, such as whole slide imagers, as well as associated software and storage systems. At the same time, the burgeoning market is also sparking the development of novel devices set to ease life in the lab. A quick look at recent products supports the rosy outlook.


launched its Aperio GT 450 DX digital pathology scanner, which aims to increase throughput, reduce turnaround times and generate high-quality images in primary diagnosis. Less than six months later, Roche delivered two artificial intelligence- based uPath image analysis algorithms that, combined with the company’s Ventana DP 200 slide scanner and uPath enterprise software, are set to deliver precision patient diagnosis in breast cancer. Roche also introduced Digital Pathology Open Environment so software developers can integrate image analysis tools for tumour tissue with its enterprise software. ‘We’ve been at the early stages of digital


pathology for a while now,’ said Mike Rivers, vice president and lifecycle leader, digital pathology, from Roche’s Ventana Medical Systems. ‘Te market has been held back by factors such as IT infrastructure and storage costs, but these [issues] are resolving in the right direction, the technology is maturing and people are really seeing the opportunities. ‘Ultimately we want to enable pathologists


to take advantage of the digital environment and do things that they can’t do manually... Tis could be synchronising multiple digital images together and allowing them to make annotations on multiple sequential sections of tissue with a single annotation,’ he added.


Leica Biosystems’ Aperio GT 450 DX is designed for high-volume clinical labs to scale up digital pathology operations


Ensuring that whole slide imaging and


software can be integrated into a clinical setting’s existing pathology workflow is critical, as is the move towards automated image analysis, to reduce turnaround times. And along the way, artificial intelligence will play a key role. ‘Scanners have already improved


dramatically in terms of speed and image quality so AI is going to be the next big thing that will push us past the tipping point – we have a good example of image analysis algorithms making a difference in breast pathology,’ Rivers said. Indeed, in October this year, Roche joined


forces with pathology AI developers, PathAI and Ibex Medical Analytics, to develop embedded image analysis workflows that can be accessed via the cloud version of its uPath enterprise software, Navify Digital Pathology. Rivers is convinced AI algorithms will particularly assist pathologists in quantifying data. ‘In a tumour micro-environment you


often want to see multiple biomarkers at the same time... Tis can become difficult for the human eye to distinguish, but effective use of image analysis and AI to, say, convolute the colours, provide proximity analysis and other measurements of interest, could ultimately be very powerful,’ he said. As part of a digital pathology workflow,


Multispectral lensless imaging from CEA-Leti, used to differentiate tumour cells (left) and bacteria (right)


18 IMAGING AND MACHINE VISION EUROPE DECEMBER 2021/JANUARY 2022


AI could also be used to prioritise a pathologist’s caseload and allow an algorithm to perform the tedious task of counting cell division, or mitoses. Still, uncertainties exist around AI and the jury is also out on when fully digital workflows will


@imveurope | www.imveurope.com


CEA-Leti


Leica Biosystems


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