Remote primary diagnosis. Primarily, this encompasses remote frozen section service for hospitals lacking local surgical pathology. A remote frozen section service may be of interest to many hospitals, even if the annual number of cases is limited. I consider the potential of this application promising, and it could have an important effect on diagnostic reliability. The value may be more pronounced within certain areas of surgical pathology, such as neuropathology and transplantation pathology, and in laboratories with few pathologists.
Appropriate equipment is inexpensive and easy to use.
In the absence of standards, software compatibility can be a problem. Quantitative digital image analyses of muscle tissue, hormone receptors, other antigen markers, tumor ploidy and chromosomes are new fields in surgical pathology. Digital images can be transmitted via a network to centers specializing in image analysis. The percentage of specimens in a given path lab with a need for specialized analyses is low, and there are many pitfalls in appropriate tissue preparation and image selection. Course material in diagnostic pathology, based on still images distributed through a network or through the Internet, will improve quality assurance and more generalized adoption of diagnostic criteria.