VENTANA ISCAN DRIVERS
The firm has focused on optimizing reliability and performance, reflected in image quality and scanning speed, he added.Īs Roche executives look at digital pathology adoption, they see several drivers and barriers, Rivers said, adding, "One of the things that has held up the wide adoption of digital pathology within the clinical market is that technology maturity has been lacking, and scanning is just one part of that." Its design is not an iterative improvement, he said. The DP 200 is suited for remote pathology, frozen sections, and high-value image analysis. The firm's existing scanners - iScan Coreo for small- to medium-volume labs and iScan HT for high-volume labs - have been on the market for more than seven years, and they will continue to be the firm's go-to products in US clinical markets as the firm looks to achieve FDA clearance for its new scanner, Rivers said. In developing the new scanner, Roche "saw an opportunity for dramatic improvements" over both its own scanners and others on the market, Rivers said.
Image quality is always paramount pathologists expect the digital image to be equivalent to the glass slide." "With the gradual move to using digital pathology for primary diagnosis, high-throughput scanners are key to successful implementation. Roche's "improved hardware" will help boost "the expansion of digital pathology," Eric Glassy, medical director of Affiliated Pathologists Medical Group, which specializes in anatomic, clinical, and digital pathology, said in an interview. It easily integrates with image management services, include Roche's Virtuoso image and workflow management software, and is compatible with a Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) Standard on which digital pathology firms have been collaborating. The device has a scan speed of less than 49 seconds for a 15-by-15 millimeter scan area and applies a "unique" color profile to each image to ensure that the digital image closely matches colors observed under a microscope, Roche said. Rivers noted that digital pathology technology is maturing, and manufacturers are making progress in resolving issues restraining adoption, and Roche's new scanner is an example of this. These systems have begun to penetrate markets in which pathologists traditionally evaluate tissue biopsies on glass slides using microscopes.ĭigital pathology companies see a lot of opportunity for adoption, Rivers said, adding that one of his firm's objectives is to "leverage its leadership and presence in the tissue lab and expand on it with these digital pathology tools." He noted that Roche designed the new scanner to address some of the market challenges that have held back adoption not only of digital scanning but of the broader area of end-to-end digital pathology systems. Other parts of the in vitro diagnostic lab, such as clinical chemistry, are far more automated, but "digitization is on its way in pathology," said Rivers, who also sits on the board of the Digital Pathology Association, a nonprofit seeking to advancing the field of digital pathology. Studies are in process with a view to getting clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration that would permit marketing the scanner for clinical use in the US in the future, he said. With the development of the new Ventana DP 200 slide scanner, which is available to clinical labs outside the US and for research use in the US, Roche is "automating a piece of the pathology workflow in a robust way," Michael Rivers, vice president of digital pathology at Roche Tissue Diagnostics, said in an interview. NEW YORK (360Dx) – Roche's recent launch of a high-speed scanner for digital pathology marks a new step in the direction of more automated systems in a field with relatively slow adoption, according to the firm's executives and other industry sources.
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