Advances in digital pathology

Characterization of cancer diseases and preparation of diagnostic reports after analyzing tissue specimens and several cell samples are provided by pathologists. One of the most successful strategies in pathology is to divide tumors into different subtypes and to adapt the treatment for each tumor. However, this approach has put a big burden on pathologists, who are reviewing tissue samples under the light of the microscope. Because, tumors have about 200 subtypes and pathologies are facing a growing demand for accurate and fast diagnosis and also patient safety. Therefore, digital pathology has been important and growing rapidly. Advances in computer technology such as computing power, faster networks and cheaper storage have enabled pathologists to manage images more easily than in the last decade. Novel pathology tools have a potential for automated and faster diagnosis and also better management of data. Moreover, it enables re-reducibility, validation of results, quality assurance and sharing of new ideas at anywhere and anytime. Advances in digital pathology have been reviewed in this paper. It seems that innovations in technologies will not only provide important improvements in pathology service, but also they will change healthcare and research fundamentally despite some challenges.   Keywords: Cell detection, computer assisted diagnosis, digital pathology, image analysis, nuclei segmentation, tissue classification.