Diagnostic Review with Digital Pathology: Design of digitals tools for routine diagnostic use
Doctoral thesis, 2016
Digital pathology
Visualization
Human-computer interaction
Author
Jesper Molin
Chalmers, Applied Information Technology (Chalmers), Interaction design
Around 60 000 new cancer patients are diagnosed in Sweden every year. This means that every third person can expect to be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. However, treatments are getting better so two out of three cancer patients survive thanks to improved treatments. One of the most successful strategies has been to divide tumors into different subtypes and tailor the treatment for each specific tumor. Currently, cancer tumors are divided into around 200 subtypes. This strategy has put a tremendous burden on pathologists, the specialists that perform the subtyping.
This thesis presents the results from a research effort to create the next generation of digital diagnostic tools for pathologists. Instead of diagnosing the tumors with microscopes, they are scanned digitally, which allow diagnostic review using computer workstations. This makes it possible to use ergonomic input devices and to integrate report creation directly into the image review.
A further possibility that is explored is to use digital image analysis to automatically detect, classify and count tumor cells. This could help speed up the diagnostic process. However, tools based on automatic algorithms need to be used with care, since they cannot deal with unforeseen cases. The second part of the thesis explores ways that this problem could be overcome by using different interactive visualization techniques.
Areas of Advance
Information and Communication Technology
Subject Categories
Computer and Information Science
Design
Human Computer Interaction
ISBN
978-91-7597-497-2
Doktorsavhandlingar vid Chalmers tekniska högskola. Ny serie: 4178
Publisher
Chalmers
Jupiter 520
Opponent: Helwig Hauser, University of Bergen, Norway