Assessment of Color Reproducibility and Mitigation of Color Variation in Whole Slide Image Scanners for Toxicologic Pathology

Digital pathology workflows in toxicologic pathology rely on whole slide images (WSIs) from histopathology slides. Inconsistent color reproduction by WSI scanners of different models and from different manufacturers can result in different color representations and inter-scanner color variation in t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Toxicologic pathology 2023-08, Vol.51 (6), p.313-328
Main Authors: Chu, Mei-Lan, Ge, Xing-Yue M., Eastham, Jeffrey, Nguyen, Trung, Fuji, Reina N., Sullivan, Ruth, Ruderman, Daniel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Artificial Intelligence
Humans
Pathologists
Reproducibility of Results
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Digital pathology workflows in toxicologic pathology rely on whole slide images (WSIs) from histopathology slides. Inconsistent color reproduction by WSI scanners of different models and from different manufacturers can result in different color representations and inter-scanner color variation in the WSIs. Although pathologists can accommodate a range of color variation during their evaluation of WSIs, color variability can degrade the performance of computational applications in digital pathology. In particular, color variability can compromise the generalization of artificial intelligence applications to large volumes of data from diverse sources. To address these challenges, we developed a process that includes two modules: (1) assessing the color reproducibility of our scanners and the color variation among them and (2) applying color correction to WSIs to minimize the color deviation and variation. Our process ensures consistent color reproduction across WSI scanners and enhances color homogeneity in WSIs, and its flexibility enables easy integration as a post-processing step following scanning by WSI scanners of different models and from different manufacturers.
ISSN:0192-6233
1533-1601
DOI:10.1177/01926233231224468