Breakthrough in breast cancer diagnosis

QinetiQ has developed the world’s first automatic breast-cancer diagnostic system, PathScore. Traditional diagnosis is time consuming and subjective, problems exacerbated by the worldwide shortage of pathologists. Evaluation of the new system showed its performance to be similar to that of a human pathologist but with enhanced reproducibility. It can be in constant use and requires no extra specialist equipment as it is compatible with existing computers, microscopes and cameras.

Until now, use of compressed images for remote diagnosis has been controversial because commercial image compression algorithms such as JPEG often lose important detail. The PathScore team has developed a content-sensitive technique that achieves high compression ratio without loss of diagnostically important information and enables transmission of the very large quantity of images over realistic bandwidths in realistic times. This allows pathologists to give a valid second opinion from a remote computer screen, making telepathology a viable option.

The system could also be used to create a patient database in which the scoring of prognostic features of breast cancer is comparable from patient to patient. Such a database would be invaluable in clinical trials of both new and existing therapies.