Abstract
New imaging technologies are changing the field of digital pathology. This field faces numerous challenges and there is a pressing need for standardization, calibration protocols, quality control and quantitative assessment. We have designed a new calibration imaging slide (Cancer Imaging Slide), specifically to measure the characteristics of old or new imaging systems or scanners. The layout of the slide consists of 138 boxes with the side length of 1.6 mm, containing objects of known morphologic and photometric characteristics. Among them, 112 boxes contain different permutations of circles, ovals, and squares. The circles have different radii, radius/pitch ratios and step transmissions. The ovals have different sizes and orientations. The squares are consistent in size and orientation but have different step transmission values. Also, 16 boxes contain three resolution test targets: crosses, USAF target and Siemens star. The last 10 boxes are blank boxes with different transmission values. Four slides were scanned and imaged on one commercial whole-slide scanner and one high resolution imaging system. After segmenting the images, about 200 features (photometric, morphologic and architectural) were measured with our in-house image processing software. The objective of the project is to develop a statistical process control using this new slide. In this paper, we describe the characteristics of the slide and present our preliminary results.
