Feasibility of telepathology in neurooncological diagnosis: A prospective study allowing the analysis of histological images and cases to be viewed by several partners

Abstract

We investigated 52 randomly selected tissue specimens from patients undergoing brain surgery in a prospective mode with telepathology equipment. The telepathology system applied TELEMIC and used the Internet as a telecommunication link. All cases were selected from the routine diagnostic workload in the Neurosurgical Pathology Laboratory in Poznan. The diagnostsis was based on telemicroscopy with a remotely operated robotic microscope and a digital camera. The telediagnoses were compared with the conventional diagnoses of paraffin-embedded section. The accuracy of diagnostic procedure was analyzed by statistical methods. The mean accuracy for the remote diagnosis was calculated to 98%. Pathologists involved in the study assessed the image quality as sufficient for a correct evaluation. The time period for establishing a final diagnosis with the remote microscope was acceptable. Further technical improvements of Internet networks should boost telepathology as an everyday method for remote diagnosis of neurooncological cases. Thus, this level of operation can be used in real-time diagnosis and may be used to transport a specialist's expertise to remote sites including hospitals without a neurooncologist. In addition, this form of telepathology is an ideal tool for education.