Standards in Digital Pathology: Status quo

Abstract

Recent advancements in whole slide digital imaging technologies brought and will bring ignificantly altered traditional workflows within pathology laboratories. A diagnostic digital pathology requires the deep integration of pathology laboratory and imaging workflows, including order entry, result reporting, image storing, image manipulation, and image management. As far as different systems from different vendors are required for those integrated workflows, a common understanding for the workflow between the different partners is inevitable. Standards are the formalized representation of that common understanding. The status quo of four main classes of international reference standards for their use in digital pathology is described.