Callaghan Jonathan P, Freimane Katrina Z, Brown Rachel M, Cratchley Alyn L, Kendall Timothy J
Pathology and Data Analytics, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
Department of Cellular Pathology, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham, UK.
J Pathol Clin Res. 2025 Jul;11(4):e70032. doi: 10.1002/2056-4538.70032.
External Quality Assessment (EQA) schemes are an important quality assurance tool and aim to ensure consistency among histopathologists. In this study, we use Shannon entropy as a novel metric to evaluate linguistic variability in the UK Liver Pathology EQA scheme. Analysing free-text responses by participants over a decade, we aimed to quantify language trends in morphological assessments and clinicopathological diagnoses. Accounting for an increasing word count and when pathologists joined the scheme, our findings reveal a significant increase in entropy of morphological assessments over time, indicating growing linguistic diversity that may reflect the increasing complexity of liver pathology. Entropy of clinicopathological diagnoses over the same period did not provide clear evidence for convergent diagnostic language. High entropy corresponded to cases that elicited more diverse responses and could be considered more challenging, highlighting the utility of this method to identify potential areas for targeted education. We demonstrate entropy as a novel tool to analyse pathologist language and enhance quality assurance in the evolving pathology landscape.
外部质量评估（EQA）计划是一种重要的质量保证工具，旨在确保组织病理学家之间的一致性。在本研究中，我们使用香农熵作为一种新的指标来评估英国肝脏病理学EQA计划中的语言变异性。通过分析参与者在十年间的自由文本回复，我们旨在量化形态学评估和临床病理诊断中的语言趋势。考虑到字数的增加以及病理学家加入该计划的时间，我们的研究结果显示，随着时间的推移，形态学评估的熵显著增加，这表明语言多样性不断增加，可能反映了肝脏病理学日益复杂的情况。同期临床病理诊断的熵并未为趋同的诊断语言提供明确证据。高熵对应于引发更多样化反应的病例，可被视为更具挑战性，这凸显了该方法在识别有针对性教育潜在领域方面的实用性。我们证明熵是一种分析病理学家语言并在不断发展的病理学领域加强质量保证的新工具。
