Digital Pathology

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UMHS Tumor Boards and Digital Pathology

The support of clinical tumor boards is a priority for the Slide Scanning Service. As of November 2016, we support seven regularly scheduled tumor boards and three that meet as needed.

The use of whole slide images (WSI) to show Pathology content provides certain benefits to faculty at present and will be very important once the Pathology moves to the NCRC is accomplished.

This page is intended as a resource for faculty and staff to obtain basic information about how to "go digital" with a tumor board, personnel contact information, generalized workflows, and cutoff times for slide scan request submission.

Important note about turnaround times: the slide scanning service supports tumor boards as a priority. We understand that cases can and often do come in within 24 hours of the tumor board. Any cutoff times published here are to be considered "soft" deadlines. We strongly encourage faculty, fellows, and administrative staff to envision our service as "can do" and to contact us with any short TAT concerns.

 

 

Getting started - First Steps:

  1. Design a workflow for efficiently identifying slides of interest for scanning and delivering them to the appropriate administrative assistant.  In particular, assess whether cases likely to be presented at the tumor board can be identified well in advance of the likely TB date.
  2. Contact the Slide Scanning Service (pouillet@med.umich.edu) to discuss estimated slide numbers, approximate cutoff times, and administrative personnel, and to receive tutorials in navigating the Tumor Boards web page and ImageScope software.  Installation of ImageScope software may be required before digital slides can be reviewed on any given workstation. 
  3. Study the intended conference room beforehand and assess whether existing hardware/software is sufficient or whether a Pathology-only laptop may be required.
  4. Have a method in mind for identifying which cases for a given tumor board have been scanned >1 week prior and communicating this information to the slide scanning service before TB.  If necessary, it is easy for us to change the date of any given slide and make it appear on a web page for a certain TB for a certain date.

 

Then - For Administrative Staff:

Fill out a scan request form. Please see the Detailed Instructions subsection of the Slide Scanning Service website.

 

Then - For Faculty, Fellows, and Staff:

Locate and manage past slide scans for particular cases for particular tumor boards and dates. Often, one of three scenarios occurs in the routine digital slide-tumor board workflow:

  1. Whole-slide images were captured at some point in the past, and these images need to be present on the appropriate tumor board web page for a given conference & date
  2. It is likely that a given case will go to the tumor board, but the future date is uncertain. 
  3. It is unknown whether a given case has had slides scanned in the past. If so, the pathologist would like to show these images at a given tumor board and date.

Our programmer, Josh Jacques, has created a search tool that is fast, easy to use, and capable of interrogating nearly our entire library of over 50,000 images. You can search by U-M accession number, stain, anatomic site keyword, and diagnosis keyword.

What makes the tool especially powerful is that an accession number match will bring up a list of all slides that have been scanned for that particular case.  Via links, the images can be viewed immediately (provided ImageScope software is installed on your workstation).

The search tool is located within the Tumor Boards subsection of the Pathology Portal.  Instructions for accessing and using it are located here.

  • For item 1), Once the case(s) of interest has been determined to have been scanned, the staff or faculty member can simply email us a list of cases that need to appear on the web page for a certain tumor board for a certain date.  This is a quick and easy step for us.
  • For item 2), We recommend choosing the next available tumor board date. This can always be changed later.
  • For item 3), Simply use the search tool and email us.

 

Tumor Board Information Table:

Support staff contacts, suggested cutoff times, and conference room locations.

Tumor Board information - Print Out

Subspecialty Tumor Board Day Time Conference Rm. Contact Admin Approximate Cutoff for Submissions Equipment Needed  
Neuropathology Brain Friday  7 am Taubman 3898 Justin Flees (fleesj) Thur / 3:30 pm    
CNS Precision Med First Friday 2 pm Taubman 3898 Justin Flees (fleesj) Fr / 10 am    
CPC As Needed -- Taubman 3898 Justin Flees (fleesj) --    
Hematopathology Lymphoma Thursday 4:30 pm CC B1-286 Bill Sherman (wmsherma) Thur / 12 pm Laptop  
Genitourinary G-U Oncology Tuesday 5 pm CC B1-286 Mandy Oakman (aeoakman)
Shirley Hoffman (seandrew)		 Tues / 1 pm    
Radiology / Pathology (Prostate) Monday 7 am UH B1-C111 Mandy Oakman (aeoakman) Fri / 4 pm Laptop  
Gynecology Gynecologic Oncology Wednesday 4 pm MS1 4234 -- Wed / 12 pm    
  Sarcoma Wednesday 4:45 pm CC B1-286 Shirley Hoffman (seandrew) Wed / 1 pm    
  Thoracic Friday 12 pm CC B1-286 -- Fri / 9 am Laptop  
Dermatopathology CPC Every 6-8 Weeks -- MS1 3251 -- --