Department of Computer Engineering, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal.
BMD Software, 3830-352 Aveiro, Portugal.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Mar 17;22(6):2322. doi: 10.3390/s22062322.
The evolution of biomedical imaging technology is allowing the digitization of hundreds of glass slides at once. There are multiple microscope scanners available in the market including low-cost solutions that can serve small centers. Moreover, new technology is being researched to acquire images and new modalities are appearing in the market such as electron microscopy. This reality offers new diagnostics tools to clinical practice but emphasizes also the lack of multivendor system's interoperability. Without the adoption of standard data formats and communications methods, it will be impossible to build this industry through the installation of vendor-neutral archives and the establishment of telepathology services in the cloud. The DICOM protocol is a feasible solution to the aforementioned problem because it already provides an interface for visible light and whole slide microscope imaging modalities. While some scanners currently have DICOM interfaces, the vast majority of manufacturers continue to use proprietary solutions. This article proposes an automated DICOMization pipeline that can efficiently transform distinct proprietary microscope images from CLSM, FIB-SEM, and WSI scanners into standard DICOM with their biological information maintained within their metadata. The system feasibility and performance were evaluated with fifteen distinct proprietary modalities, including stacked WSI samples. The results demonstrated that the proposed methodology is accurate and can be used in production. The normalized objects were stored through the standard communications in the Dicoogle open-source archive.
生物医学成像技术的发展使得一次可以数字化数百张载玻片。市场上有多种显微镜扫描仪可供选择，包括可以为小型中心服务的低成本解决方案。此外，正在研究新技术以获取图像，并且新的模态在市场上出现，例如电子显微镜。这一现实为临床实践提供了新的诊断工具，但也强调了多供应商系统互操作性的缺乏。如果不采用标准的数据格式和通信方法，就不可能通过安装供应商中立的档案和在云中建立远程病理学服务来建立这个行业。DICOM 协议是解决上述问题的可行方法，因为它已经为可见光和全玻片显微镜成像模式提供了接口。虽然一些扫描仪目前具有 DICOM 接口，但绝大多数制造商仍继续使用专有解决方案。本文提出了一种自动化的 DICOM 化管道，可以有效地将来自 CLSM、FIB-SEM 和 WSI 扫描仪的不同专有显微镜图像转换为标准的 DICOM，同时在元数据中保留其生物信息。该系统的可行性和性能通过十五种不同的专有模式进行了评估，包括堆叠的 WSI 样本。结果表明，所提出的方法是准确的，可以在生产中使用。通过 Dicoogle 开源存档中的标准通信存储了标准化对象。
