Current Developments of Artificial Intelligence in Digital Pathology and Its Future Clinical Applications in Gastrointestinal Cancers

Role of artificial intelligence in digital pathology for gynecological cancers

The diagnosis of cancer is typically based on histopathological sections or biopsies on glass slides. Artificial intelligence (AI) approaches have greatly enhanced our ability to extract quantitative information from digital histopathology images as a rapid growth in oncology data. Gynecological cancers are major diseases affecting women's health worldwide. They are characterized by high mortality and poor prognosis, underscoring the critical importance of early detection, treatment, and identification of prognostic factors. This review highlights the various clinical applications of AI in gynecological cancers using digitized histopathology slides. Particularly, deep learning models have shown promise in accurately diagnosing, classifying histopathological subtypes, and predicting treatment response and prognosis. Furthermore, the integration with transcriptomics, proteomics, and other multi-omics techniques can provide valuable insights into the molecular features of diseases. Despite the considerable potential of AI, substantial challenges remain. Further improvements in data acquisition and model optimization are required, and the exploration of broader clinical applications, such as the biomarker discovery, need to be explored.

Computational pathology: A survey review and the way forward

Computational Pathology (CPath) is an interdisciplinary science that augments developments of computational approaches to analyze and model medical histopathology images. The main objective for CPath is to develop infrastructure and workflows of digital diagnostics as an assistive CAD system for clinical pathology, facilitating transformational changes in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer that are mainly address by CPath tools. With evergrowing developments in deep learning and computer vision algorithms, and the ease of the data flow from digital pathology, currently CPath is witnessing a paradigm shift. Despite the sheer volume of engineering and scientific works being introduced for cancer image analysis, there is still a considerable gap of adopting and integrating these algorithms in clinical practice. This raises a significant question regarding the direction and trends that are undertaken in CPath. In this article we provide a comprehensive review of more than 800 papers to address the challenges faced in problem design all-the-way to the application and implementation viewpoints. We have catalogued each paper into a model-card by examining the key works and challenges faced to layout the current landscape in CPath. We hope this helps the community to locate relevant works and facilitate understanding of the field's future directions. In a nutshell, we oversee the CPath developments in cycle of stages which are required to be cohesively linked together to address the challenges associated with such multidisciplinary science. We overview this cycle from different perspectives of data-centric, model-centric, and application-centric problems. We finally sketch remaining challenges and provide directions for future technical developments and clinical integration of CPath. For updated information on this survey review paper and accessing to the original model cards repository, please refer to GitHub. Updated version of this draft can also be found from arXiv.

Expanding role and scope of artificial intelligence in the field of gastrointestinal pathology

Digital pathology (DP) and its subsidiaries including artificial intelligence (AI) are rapidly making inroads into the area of diagnostic anatomic pathology (AP) including gastrointestinal (GI) pathology. It is poised to revolutionize the field of diagnostic AP. Historically, AP has been slow to adopt digital technology, but this is changing rapidly, with many centers worldwide transitioning to DP. Coupled with advanced techniques of AI such as deep learning and machine learning, DP is likely to transform histopathology from a subjective field to an objective, efficient, and transparent discipline. AI is increasingly integrated into GI pathology, offering numerous advancements and improvements in overall diagnostic accuracy, efficiency, and patient care. Specifically, AI in GI pathology enhances diagnostic accuracy, streamlines workflows, provides predictive insights, integrates multimodal data, supports research, and aids in education and training, ultimately improving patient care and outcomes. This review summarized the latest developments in the role and scope of AI in AP with a focus on GI pathology. The main aim was to provide updates and create awareness among the pathology community.

Potential rapid intraoperative cancer diagnosis using dynamic full-field optical coherence tomography and deep learning: A prospective cohort study in breast cancer patients

An intraoperative diagnosis is critical for precise cancer surgery. However, traditional intraoperative assessments based on hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) histology, such as frozen section, are time-, resource-, and labor-intensive, and involve specimen-consuming concerns. Here, we report a near-real-time automated cancer diagnosis workflow for breast cancer that combines dynamic full-field optical coherence tomography (D-FFOCT), a label-free optical imaging method, and deep learning for bedside tumor diagnosis during surgery. To classify the benign and malignant breast tissues, we conducted a prospective cohort trial. In the modeling group (n = 182), D-FFOCT images were captured from April 26 to June 20, 2018, encompassing 48 benign lesions, 114 invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC), 10 invasive lobular carcinoma, 4 ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), and 6 rare tumors. Deep learning model was built up and fine-tuned in 10,357 D-FFOCT patches. Subsequently, from June 22 to August 17, 2018, independent tests (n = 42) were conducted on 10 benign lesions, 29 IDC, 1 DCIS, and 2 rare tumors. The model yielded excellent performance, with an accuracy of 97.62%, sensitivity of 96.88% and specificity of 100%; only one IDC was misclassified. Meanwhile, the acquisition of the D-FFOCT images was non-destructive and did not require any tissue preparation or staining procedures. In the simulated intraoperative margin evaluation procedure, the time required for our novel workflow (approximately 3 min) was significantly shorter than that required for traditional procedures (approximately 30 min). These findings indicate that the combination of D-FFOCT and deep learning algorithms can streamline intraoperative cancer diagnosis independently of traditional pathology laboratory procedures.

Harnessing artificial intelligence for prostate cancer management

Prostate cancer (PCa) is a common malignancy in males. The pathology review of PCa is crucial for clinical decision-making, but traditional pathology review is labor intensive and subjective to some extent. Digital pathology and whole-slide imaging enable the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in pathology. This review highlights the success of AI in detecting and grading PCa, predicting patient outcomes, and identifying molecular subtypes. We propose that AI-based methods could collaborate with pathologists to reduce workload and assist clinicians in formulating treatment recommendations. We also introduce the general process and challenges in developing AI pathology models for PCa. Importantly, we summarize publicly available datasets and open-source codes to facilitate the utilization of existing data and the comparison of the performance of different models to improve future studies.

Development and validation of a Radiopathomics model based on CT scans and whole slide images for discriminating between Stage I-II and Stage III gastric cancer

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to develop and validate an artificial intelligence radiopathological model using preoperative CT scans and postoperative hematoxylin and eosin (HE) stained slides to predict the pathological staging of gastric cancer (stage I-II and stage III).

METHODS

This study included a total of 202 gastric cancer patients with confirmed pathological staging (training cohort: n = 141; validation cohort: n = 61). Pathological histological features were extracted from HE slides, and pathological models were constructed using logistic regression (LR), support vector machine (SVM), and NaiveBayes. The optimal pathological model was selected through receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. Machine learnin algorithms were employed to construct radiomic models and radiopathological models using the optimal pathological model. Model performance was evaluated using ROC curve analysis, and clinical utility was estimated using decision curve analysis (DCA).

RESULTS

A total of 311 pathological histological features were extracted from the HE images, including 101 Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) features and 210 deep learning features. A pathological model was constructed using 19 selected pathological features through dimension reduction, with the SVM model demonstrating superior predictive performance (AUC, training cohort: 0.949; validation cohort: 0.777). Radiomic features were constructed using 6 selected features from 1834 radiomic features extracted from CT scans via SVM machine algorithm. Simultaneously, a radiopathomics model was built using 17 non-zero coefficient features obtained through dimension reduction from a total of 2145 features (combining both radiomics and pathomics features). The best discriminative ability was observed in the SVM_radiopathomics model (AUC, training cohort: 0.953; validation cohort: 0.851), and clinical decision curve analysis (DCA) demonstrated excellent clinical utility.

CONCLUSION

The radiopathomics model, combining pathological and radiomic features, exhibited superior performance in distinguishing between stage I-II and stage III gastric cancer. This study is based on the prediction of pathological staging using pathological tissue slides from surgical specimens after gastric cancer curative surgery and preoperative CT images, highlighting the feasibility of conducting research on pathological staging using pathological slides and CT images.

Accuracy of GPT-4 in histopathological image detection and classification of colorectal adenomas

AIMS

To evaluate the accuracy of Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) powered by GPT-4 in histopathological image detection and classification of colorectal adenomas using the diagnostic consensus provided by pathologists as a reference standard.

METHODS

A study was conducted with 100 colorectal polyp photomicrographs, comprising an equal number of adenomas and non-adenomas, classified by two pathologists. These images were analysed by classic GPT-4 for 1 time in October 2023 and custom GPT-4 for 20 times in December 2023. GPT-4's responses were compared against the reference standard through statistical measures to evaluate its proficiency in histopathological diagnosis, with the pathologists further assessing the model's descriptive accuracy.

RESULTS

GPT-4 demonstrated a median sensitivity of 74% and specificity of 36% for adenoma detection. The median accuracy of polyp classification varied, ranging from 16% for non-specific changes to 36% for tubular adenomas. Its diagnostic consistency, indicated by low kappa values ranging from 0.06 to 0.11, suggested only poor to slight agreement. All of the microscopic descriptions corresponded with their diagnoses. GPT-4 also commented about the limitations in its diagnoses (eg, slide diagnosis best done by pathologists, the inadequacy of single-image diagnostic conclusions, the need for clinical data and a higher magnification view).

CONCLUSIONS

GPT-4 showed high sensitivity but low specificity in detecting adenomas and varied accuracy for polyp classification. However, its diagnostic consistency was low. This artificial intelligence tool acknowledged its diagnostic limitations, emphasising the need for a pathologist's expertise and additional clinical context.

ChatGPT as an aid for pathological diagnosis of cancer

Diagnostic workup of cancer patients is highly reliant on the science of pathology using cytopathology, histopathology, and other ancillary techniques like immunohistochemistry and molecular cytogenetics. Data processing and learning by means of artificial intelligence (AI) has become a spearhead for the advancement of medicine, with pathology and laboratory medicine being no exceptions. ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbot, that was recently launched by OpenAI, is currently a talk of the town, and its role in cancer diagnosis is also being explored meticulously. Pathology workflow by integration of digital slides, implementation of advanced algorithms, and computer-aided diagnostic techniques extend the frontiers of the pathologist's view beyond a microscopic slide and enables effective integration, assimilation, and utilization of knowledge that is beyond human limits and boundaries. Despite of it's numerous advantages in the pathological diagnosis of cancer, it comes with several challenges like integration of digital slides with input language parameters, problems of bias, and legal issues which have to be addressed and worked up soon so that we as a pathologists diagnosing malignancies are on the same band wagon and don't miss the train.

Artificial intelligence in rectal cancer: What is the future?

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most prevalent cancer in both men and women, and it is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths globally. Around 60%-70% of CRC patients are diagnosed at advanced stages, with nearly 20% having liver metastases. It is noteworthy that the 5-year survival rates decline significantly from 80%-90% for localized disease to a mere 10%-15% for patients with metastasis at the time of diagnosis. Early diagnosis, appropriate therapeutic strategy, accurate assessment of treatment response, and prognostication is essential for better outcome. There has been significant technological development in the last couple of decades to improve the outcome of rectal cancer including Artificial intelligence (AI). AI is a broad term used to describe the study of machines that mimic human intelligence, such as perceiving the environment, drawing logical conclusions from observations, and performing complex tasks. At present AI has demonstrated a promising role in early diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment outcomes for patients with rectal cancer, a limited role in surgical decision making, and had a bright future.

Exploring the Role of Circulating Cell-Free RNA in the Development of Colorectal Cancer

Circulating tumor RNA (ctRNA) has recently emerged as a novel and attractive liquid biomarker. CtRNA is capable of providing important information about the expression of a variety of target genes noninvasively, without the need for biopsies, through the use of circulating RNA sequencing. The overexpression of cancer-specific transcripts increases the tumor-derived RNA signal, which overcomes limitations due to low quantities of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA). The purpose of this work is to present an up-to-date review of current knowledge regarding ctRNAs and their status as biomarkers to address the diagnosis, prognosis, prediction, and drug resistance of colorectal cancer. The final section of the article discusses the practical aspects involved in analyzing plasma ctRNA, including storage and isolation, detection technologies, and their limitations in clinical applications.

Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Diagnostic Cytology and Genomic Testing for Hematologic Disorders

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly evolving field of computer science that involves the development of computational programs that can mimic human intelligence. In particular, machine learning and deep learning models have enabled the identification and grouping of patterns within data, leading to the development of AI systems that have been applied in various areas of hematology, including digital pathology, alpha thalassemia patient screening, cytogenetics, immunophenotyping, and sequencing. These AI-assisted methods have shown promise in improving diagnostic accuracy and efficiency, identifying novel biomarkers, and predicting treatment outcomes. However, limitations such as limited databases, lack of validation and standardization, systematic errors, and bias prevent AI from completely replacing manual diagnosis in hematology. In addition, the processing of large amounts of patient data and personal information by AI poses potential data privacy issues, necessitating the development of regulations to evaluate AI systems and address ethical concerns in clinical AI systems. Nonetheless, with continued research and development, AI has the potential to revolutionize the field of hematology and improve patient outcomes. To fully realize this potential, however, the challenges facing AI in hematology must be addressed and overcome.

Hybrid Techniques for Diagnosing Endoscopy Images for Early Detection of Gastrointestinal Disease Based on Fusion Features

Gastrointestinal (GI) diseases, particularly tumours, are considered one of the most widespread and dangerous diseases and thus need timely health care for early detection to reduce deaths. Endoscopy technology is an effective technique for diagnosing GI diseases, thus producing a video containing thousands of frames. However, it is difficult to analyse all the images by a gastroenterologist, and it takes a long time to keep track of all the frames. Thus, artificial intelligence systems provide solutions to this challenge by analysing thousands of images with high speed and effective accuracy. Hence, systems with different methodologies are developed in this work. The first methodology for diagnosing endoscopy images of GI diseases is by using VGG-16 + SVM and DenseNet-121 + SVM. The second methodology for diagnosing endoscopy images of gastrointestinal diseases by artificial neural network (ANN) is based on fused features between VGG-16 and DenseNet-121 before and after high-dimensionality reduction by the principal component analysis (PCA). The third methodology is by ANN and is based on the fused features between VGG-16 and handcrafted features and features fused between DenseNet-121 and the handcrafted features. Herein, handcrafted features combine the features of gray level cooccurrence matrix (GLCM), discrete wavelet transform (DWT), fuzzy colour histogram (FCH), and local binary pattern (LBP) methods. All systems achieved promising results for diagnosing endoscopy images of the gastroenterology data set. The ANN network reached an accuracy, sensitivity, precision, specificity, and an AUC of 98.9%, 98.70%, 98.94%, 99.69%, and 99.51%, respectively, based on fused features of the VGG-16 and the handcrafted.

Are Health Information Systems Ready for the Digital Transformation in Portugal? Challenges and Future Perspectives

PURPOSE

This study aimed to reflect on the challenges of Health Information Systems in Portugal at a time when technologies enable the creation of new approaches and models for care provision, as well as to identify scenarios that may characterize this practice in the future.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

A guiding research model was created based on an empirical study that was conducted using a qualitative method that integrated content analysis of strategic documents and semi-structured interviews with a sample of fourteen key actors in the health sector.

FINDINGS

Results pointed to the existence of emerging technologies that may promote the development of Health Information Systems oriented to "health and well-being" in a preventive model logic and reinforce the social and management implications.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

The originality of this work resided in the empirical study carried out, which allowed us to analyze how the various actors look at the present and the future of Health Information Systems. There is also a lack of studies addressing this subject.

RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS

The main limitations resulted from a low, although representative, number of interviews and the fact that the interviews took place before the pandemic, so the digital transformation that was promoted was not reflected. Managerial implications and social implications: The study highlighted the need for greater commitment from decision makers, managers, healthcare providers, and citizens toward achieving improved digital literacy and health. Decision makers and managers must also agree on strategies to accelerate existing strategic plans and avoid their implementation at different paces.

Artificial Intelligence in Oncology: A Topical Collection in 2022

Artificial intelligence (AI) is considered one of the core technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that is currently taking place [...].

Targeted Sequencing Approach and Its Clinical Applications for the Molecular Diagnosis of Human Diseases

The outbreak of COVID-19 has positively impacted the NGS market recently. Targeted sequencing (TS) has become an important routine technique in both clinical and research settings, with advantages including high confidence and accuracy, a reasonable turnaround time, relatively low cost, and fewer data burdens with the level of bioinformatics or computational demand. Since there are no clear consensus guidelines on the wide range of next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms and techniques, there is a vital need for researchers and clinicians to develop efficient approaches, especially for the molecular diagnosis of diseases in the emergency of the disease and the global pandemic outbreak of COVID-19. In this review, we aim to summarize different methods of TS, demonstrate parameters for TS assay designs, illustrate different TS panels, discuss their limitations, and present the challenges of TS concerning their clinical application for the molecular diagnosis of human diseases.

Artificial intelligence-based triage of large bowel biopsies can improve workflow

Background

Large bowel biopsies are one of the commonest types of biopsy specimen. We describe a service evaluation study to test the feasibility of using artificial intelligence (AI) to triage large bowel biopsies from a reporting backlog and prioritize those that require more urgent reporting.

Methods

The pathway was developed in the UK by National Health Service (NHS) laboratory staff working in a medium-sized general hospital.   The AI platform was interfaced with the slide scanner software and the reporting platform's software, so that pathologists could correct the AI label and reinforce the training set as they reported the cases.

Results

he AI classifier achieved a sensitivity of 97.56% and specificity of 93.02% for the case-level-diagnosis of neoplasia (adenoma and adenocarcinoma) and for an AI diagnosis of any significant pathology (i.e., adenomas, adenocarcinomas, inflammation, hyperplastic polyps, and sessile serrated lesions) sensitivity was 95.65% and specificity 92.96%. The automated AI diagnostic classification pathway took approximately 175 s per slide to download and process the scanned whole slide image (WSI) and return an AI diagnostic classification. Biopsies with an AI diagnosis of neoplasia or inflammation were prioritized for reporting while the remainder followed the routine reporting pathway. The AI triaged pathway resulted in a significantly shorter reporting turnaround time for pathologist verified neoplastic cases (P < 0.001) and inflammation (P < 0.05). The project's costs amounted to  £14800, excluding laboratory staff salaries. More time and resources were spent on developing the interface between the AI platform and laboratory IT systems than on the development of the AI platform itself.

Conclusions

NHS laboratory staff were able to implement an AI solution to accurately triage large bowel biopsies into several diagnostic classes and this improved reporting turnaround times for cases with neoplasia or with inflammation.

Artificial intelligence applications in predicting the behavior of gastrointestinal cancers in pathology

Recent research has provided a wealth of data supporting the application of artificial intelligence (AI)-based applications in routine pathology practice. Indeed, it is clear that these methods can significantly support an accurate and rapid diagnosis by eliminating errors, increasing reliability, and improving workflow. In addition, the effectiveness of AI in the pathological evaluation of prognostic parameters associated with behavior, course, and treatment in many types of tumors has also been noted. Regarding gastrointestinal system (GIS) cancers, the contribution of AI methods to pathological diagnosis has been investigated in many studies. On the other hand, studies focusing on AI applications in evaluating parameters to determine tumor behavior are relatively few. For this purpose, the potential of AI models has been studied over a broad spectrum, from tumor subtyping to the identification of new digital biomarkers. The capacity of AI to infer genetic alterations of cancer tissues from digital slides has been demonstrated. Although current data suggest the merit of AI-based approaches in assessing tumor behavior in GIS cancers, a wide range of challenges still need to be solved, from laboratory infrastructure to improving the robustness of algorithms, before incorporating AI applications into real-life GIS pathology practice. This review aims to present data from AI applications in evaluating pathological parameters related to the behavior of GIS cancer with an overview of the opportunities and challenges encountered in implementing AI in pathology.

Artificial Intelligence-Driven Diagnosis of Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer is among the most challenging forms of cancer to treat, owing to its late diagnosis and aggressive nature that reduces the survival rate drastically. Pancreatic cancer diagnosis has been primarily based on imaging, but the current state-of-the-art imaging provides a poor prognosis, thus limiting clinicians' treatment options. The advancement of a cancer diagnosis has been enhanced through the integration of artificial intelligence and imaging modalities to make better clinical decisions. In this review, we examine how AI models can improve the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer using different imaging modalities along with a discussion on the emerging trends in an AI-driven diagnosis, based on cytopathology and serological markers. Ethical concerns regarding the use of these tools have also been discussed.