Utilizing AI to Assist Pathologists

Anil Parwani, MD, PhD, professor of pathology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, discusses how the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology can be integrated into the current workflow of pathologists.

Transcription:

0:09 | AI can be assisting the pathologist in finding things, counting things, segmenting things. It could augment my diagnosis. In other words, it could be making my diagnosis even better and more comprehensive maybe, or it could be autonomous, just like a self-driving car. There are obviously degrees of safety, there are degrees of ethics that you have to be careful about as you launch AI algorithms, but it can assist the pathologist in the very beginning when they have not seen the case.

0:51 | Let's say I come to work, I have 15 patient’s biopsies, and each biopsy code is 10 slides, and it takes me an hour to read each case. Now I have 15 cases, that is 15 hours. A lot of the time that I spend is quantitative things, measuring things, counting cells, and putting them into buckets. That means that if I can save 15% to 20% of time per biopsy, I can put that time back into patient care, I can read the reports more carefully, I can spend more time reviewing the patient's chart. I am not overwhelmed. I am not burnt out. I enjoy what I do. It could assist me.

1:42 | In the second scenario, I am looking at a rare cancer of the prostate, which is not something I usually see. I am not alert and paying attention to it, especially if the pathologist is a general pathologist, and he or she is not a specialist in prostate cancer like I am, they might miss things. The augmenting part is the computer can circle the areas, [and say] hey, look at this, just like Google Map guiding to make sure [we are] seeing everything.

2:16 | The third area is checking my work. Let's say I have looked at all those 15 cases, and I am now ready to release them into the patient's chart. AI can be a gatekeeper. It can screen those cases 1 more time and make sure everything I wrote in my report is accurate. One error means 1 error for a patient, which means wrong diagnosis, right? There are different ways AI can help us. We are a teaching Institute, so we teach trainees, medical students, residents, fellows, and AI can actually help them too. It can guide them.