Telepathology

Contents

Telepathology is about communicating pathology images by electronic transmission from one location to another, and in most cases to allow a pathologist to render a diagnosis from a location remote from the specimen and/or the microscope.

Overview

Telepathology may be used for a number of purposes:

Frozen section service (intra-operative diagnosis)
Second opinion/expert opinion
On-call service
Clinical-pathological conference
Education and training
Consensus meetings
Assessments and examinations
Image databases
Image analysis and quantitation

Frozen section service is a quick diagnosis on a stained frozen section of a biopsy while the patient is undergoing surgery. The surgeon awaits the diagnosis before deciding how to proceed with the surgery. This is a frequently used type of application, most often between larger pathology departments and hospitals without resident pathologist. In Second opinion, another pathologist outside the pathology department is called for to give a second opinion or a expert opinion on a case. Clinical-pathological conferences is meetings between the pathologists and the clinicians, where the pathologist demonstrate and discuss a diagnosis with the clinical team responsible for treating the patient.

Our Projects and systems

We have developed a number of different applications for telepathology during the last 15 years, involving everything from mobil phones to robotic systems communication over satellite links. At present, we have the following systems in use:

Interpath
Ipath

Media

Contact Information

Arne Jørgen Ryther
Institute for Medical Informatics
Phone: 95 15 52 33