Tag Archives: Pathology Horizons 2018

Application and Implementation of AI Driven Screening Processes in Pathology

Dr. Donal O’Shea, Deciphex

Developing deep learning models that account for all variants of abnormality in a given tissue slide can be a challenge requiring extensive and time consuming annotation of thousands of pathology slides by experienced pathologists. The process also needs to effectively account for tissue processing variance and digital pathology scanner selection, which is almost infinite due to the extensive range of interchangeable unit operations available for the pathology lab.

In scenarios where a high percentage of normal content presents, we propose a generalised model for abnormality detection to help identify abnormal content of interest and support the elimination of normal cases from the workflow.  The generalised model as proposed is developed solely from normal cases, requires no annotation of slides as a result and can be rapidly tailored to account for inter-laboratory processing variance.

During his presentation,“Finding Normals: Application and Implementation AI Driven Screen Processes in Pathology”Dr. O’Shea will discuss how such approaches can be leveraged, useful application segments for the technology and how he foresees this capability being embodied in software workflows.

View more on Dr. Donal O’Shea

About Pathology Horizons

Pathology Horizons is taking place from 13-15 September 2018 at the Lough Erne Resort in N.Ireland. It is a unique CPD conference, organised by Cirdan that looks at what lies ahead in pathology. Delegates will learn about new technologies, lines of research and procedural developments that are driving the future of pathology. View Agenda

Please note that given the nature of this boutique style conference that there are only a limited number of places available. If planning on attending booking soon is advisable. Register here

Pathology Horizons – It’s almost time!

With just over two months to go until the next Pathology Horizons conference excitement is starting to build. Here’s some insight into why there is such a buzz around this event.

What’s it all about?

Pathology Horizons is an annual CPD conference organised by Cirdan, which focuses on what lies ahead in pathology. Delegates attending this unique event, now in its fourth year will learn about new technologies, lines of research and procedural developments that are driving the future of pathology.

Unlike other larger pathology events, Pathology Horizons is a boutique conference with only one conference stream, allowing delegates and speakers to interact easily with each other, providing an excellent networking and learning environment.

International Experts and Groundbreaking Topics

A first class panel of speakers from across the globe, including some of the best minds in the areas of pathology, laboratory medicine and personal and organisational development have been lined up to deliver presentations. Some talks to look forward to include:

  • Virtual and Augmented Reality in Digital Pathology
  • Application of Liquid Biopsy to the Detection and Treatment of Ovarian Cancer
  • Genome Sequencing as a Diagnostic Aid
  • Emerging Neuropathology Diagnostics: Genetic Scaffolds, Phenotypes and Advanced Imaging
  • Advancing Diagnostic Pathology: Impact of Digital Pathology and Artificial Intelligence Tools
  • Extreme Makeover: Creating Pathology Reports that Make a Difference

View full agenda

Who’s attending?

The conference is open to anyone interested in the area of pathology and laboratory medicine, for example Pathologists, Biomedical Scientists and other Laboratory Professionals. Confirmed delegates this year are coming from as far afield as New Zealand and work in a mix of clinical, academic and industry settings.

What’s in it for me?

As well as the obvious learning and networking opportunities delegates can earn CPD credits for attending. The conference has been CPD certified and is approved by the Royal College of Pathologists for nine CPD credits. The added bonus is that you can get all of this professional development in a relaxed and fun environment within a five star luxury resort.

Where is Pathology Horizons being held?

The conference is being held in the Lough Erne Resort, one of Northern Ireland’s finest hotels, just outside Enniskillen in Co. Fermanagh.

What can I expect?

Here’s a quick overview of last year’s conference in Cairns, Australia. Please note having a world-class golf course onsite is not a mandatory requirement when selecting a Pathology Horizons venue 🙂

Hear from some past delegates and speakers

How can I join the conference?

For details on how to register go to www.pathologyhorizons.com/register There is always a lot of interest in this unique event and demand has been greater than ever before this year. If you are interested in attending please book soon as there are a limited amount of places remaining.

Dr. Bankhead to speak on how novel open source software platform is revolutionizing digital pathology image analysis

We are delighted to welcome Research Scientist,  Dr. Peter Bankhead to our expert panel of speakers for Pathology Horizons 2018.

Innovation increasingly relies on open tools, standards and software, empowering researchers to test new ideas and make new discoveries.  Reproducibility and standardization in science also crucially depend upon analysis methods being made freely available.

Until recently, digital pathology suffered from the lack of a software platform that would make these things possible.  Faced with a choice between attempting to analyze whole slide images using commercial systems (often prohibitively expensive) or by applying generic open source software (often prohibitively complex), much biomarker analysis in practice continued to be based on visual estimation by pathologists, which is laborious and known to have limited reproducibility.

QuPath was developed to address these issues, and represents the first widely-used, powerful, flexible, extensible and user-friendly open source platform for whole slide image analysis.  Since its release at the end of 2016, QuPath has been downloaded more than 10 000 times and is used worldwide by research groups in both academia and industry.

A central goal of QuPath is to provide the tools for pathologists and image analysts to better work together, advancing the field more rapidly.

During  his presentation at Pathology Horizons, Dr. Bankhead will outline some of the reasons behind QuPath’s success so far, and describe features currently in development that are set to greatly expand its scope and reach for digital pathology and bioimage analysis applications in the near future.

Why attend Pathology Horizons?

The conference is set to be another interesting and extremely informative event with a range of top international speakers demonstrating the power of new technologies, updates on procedural developments and valuable new lines of research – all in a relaxed and open atmosphere! Unlike other larger pathology events, Pathology Horizons is a boutique conference with one conference stream, which allows you to interact and network fully with the delegates and speakers. The conference is also CPD certified and has been awarded with 9 CPD credits by The Royal College of Pathologists.

Some other topics from speakers include: 

  • Artificial intelligence and what it means for healthcare and patholgy
  • Liquid biopsy and what it can do for detecting/treating ovarian cancer
  • Virtual and augmented reality in digital pathology
  • Genome sequencing as a diagnostic aid

View  full Agenda.

Don’t miss out, secure your place today!

Pathology Horizons 2018                                                                                    Lough Erne Resort, N. Ireland                                                                                        13-15th September

Radiology and Pathology Integration – Opportunities Outweigh the Challenges

In recent years, advances in the field of diagnostic medicine have provided enormous benefits to patients with cancer.  However, the increase in complexity of new testing modalities in pathology and radiology has also led to new challenges in gathering all essential information and forming a coherent diagnostic message for a given case.

Opportunities for optimal patient care may be lost, and diagnostic errors might not be prevented, without a formal integration of the various testing modalities in pathology and radiology.  During his presentation at Pathology Horizons 2018, Dr. Wallace will discuss the challenges of pathology and radiology correlation in the current diagnostic paradigm and the numerous opportunities for improved workflows and patient outcomes with an effective diagnostic integration process.

Dr. W. Dean Wallace  is a Professor of Pathology at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles, California. He is the chief of pulmonary and renal pathology services and is recognised as an expert in the fields of transplant pathology and lung cancer diagnostics. Dr. Wallace is also the Director of the UCLA Telepathology and Digital Pathology Centre and co-led the team that created the innovative, first of its kind, Integrated Diagnostic Report (IDR) that combines multiple radiology and pathology studies into one dynamic reporting platform. Dr. Wallace has authored several dozen peer-reviewed papers and book chapters and was lead editor of a textbook in the field of transplant pathology.

Why attend Pathology Horizons?

The conference is set to be another interesting and  informative event with a range of top international speakers demonstrating the power of new technologies, updates on procedural developments and valuable new lines of research – all in a relaxed and open atmosphere! Unlike other larger pathology events, Pathology Horizons is a boutique conference with one conference stream, which allows you to interact and network fully with the delegates and speakers. The conference is also CPD certified and has been awarded with 9 CPD credits by The Royal College of Pathologists.

Some other topics from speakers include: 

  • Artificial intelligence and what it means for healthcare and patholgy
  • Liquid biopsy and what it can do for detecting/treating ovarian cancer
  • Virtual and augmented reality in digital pathology
  • Genome sequencing as a diagnostic aid

Please note places for the conference are limited. If you are planning on attending, booking soon is advisable.  Register here

Pathology Horizons 2018                                                                                    Lough Erne Resort, N. Ireland                                                                                        13-15th September

Development of genomic assays for multi-arm clinical trials in cancer

There are an increasing number of molecular assays being developed to guide patient treatments. There is , however, often a limited amount of material available for analysis. Almac Diagnostics have therefore developed DNA and mRNA next generation sequencing based panels that have been analytically validated to deliver multiple Biomarkers from small amounts of material. An associated comprehensive patient report has been developed to guide the best treatment in oncology trials and eventually in standard clinical practice.

During his presentation at Pathology Horizons 2018 Prof. Kennedy will discuss the challenges to implementing these kind of Biomarker panels in clinical care and how these are being overcome.

Prof. Richard Kennedy is the Medical Director and Global VP of Biomarker Development at Almac Diagnostics and the McClay Professor in Medical Oncology at the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology, Queen’s University of Belfast.

Why attend Pathology Horizons?

The conference is set to be another interesting and extremely informative event with a range of top international speakers demonstrating the power of new technologies, updates on procedural developments and valuable new lines of research – all in a relaxed and open atmosphere! Unlike other larger pathology events, Pathology Horizons is a boutique conference with one conference stream, which allows you to interact and network fully with the delegates and speakers. The conference is also CPD certified and has been awarded with 9 CPD credits by The Royal College of Pathologists.

Other topics from speakers include: 

  • Artificial intelligence and what it means for healthcare
  • Liquid biopsy and what it can do for detecting/treating ovarian cancer
  • Virtual and augmented reality in digital pathology
  • Radiology and pathology integration
  • Genome sequencing as a diagnostic aid

Don’t miss out, secure your place today!

Pathology Horizons 2018                                                                                    Lough Erne Resort, N. Ireland                                                                                        13-15th September

Prof. Levenson to give MUSE update at Pathology Horizons

MUSE (Microscopy with UV Surface Excitation), a novel, fast, simple Microscopy Method for slide-free histology continues to attract interest across the world. In fact, it made the front cover of BioPhotonics Magazine this month. Cirdan first brought Prof. Richard Levenson in to speak on this topic at Pathology Horizons in 2016. We are delighted to confirm that Prof. Levenson will be sharing the latest developments in MUSE at the upcoming Pathology Horizons conference in September.

Digital imaging of tissue slides is part of the future of anatomic pathology. However, as currently implemented, while facilitating logistics and enabling advanced analytical tools, it still requires the preparation of glass slides prior to scanning. An alternative strategy that bypasses conventional histological processing and its associated delays and expense would be useful, and a number of technologies for rapid, ex-vivo, slide-free microscopy are in research-and-development phase and a few have already been deployed as research-use-only commercial instruments. These contenders to replace FFPE-based histology appear promising for such uses as real-time surgical guidance, margin assessment, rapid on-site evaluation (ROSE), and potentially even for final tissue diagnosis, while accelerating care and decreasing costs. 

Prof. Levenson’s presentation entitled: “MUSE for Slide-Free, Real-Time Histology – It’s Cooler than Frozens.” will focus on MUSE and also look at a  few of these methods, including multiphoton and confocal microscopy, light-sheet microscopy, optical coherence tomography and structured illumination.

View. Prof. Levson’s bio

View Pathology Horizons 2018 Agenda

Register here for Early Bird

UCLA’s Dr. Wallace to speak on radiology and pathology integration at Pathology Horizons 2018

We are delighted to have Dr. Dean. W. Wallace, Professor of Pathology at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles speak at Pathology Horizons 2018.

His talk at the conference ‘Opportunities Outweigh the Challenges of Radiology and Pathology Integration’ is an emerging area of discussion, and if implemented could help improve the overall quality of patient care. An abstract of Dr. Wallace’s talk will be released in the coming weeks and you will have the opportunity to hear his full presentation in September at the Lough Erne Resort in Northern Ireland.

More information on Dr. Wallace

Dr. Wallace is the chief of pulmonary and renal pathology services and is recognised as an expert in the fields of transplant pathology and lung cancer diagnostics. He is also the Director of the UCLA Telepathology and Digital Pathology Centre and co-led the team that created the innovative, first of its kind, Integrated Diagnostic Report (IDR) that combines multiple radiology and pathology studies into one dynamic reporting platform. Dr. Wallace has authored several dozen peer-reviewed papers and book chapters and was lead editor of a textbook in the field of transplant pathology.

About Pathology Horizons

 Pathology Horizons is an annual and open CPD conference organised by Cirdan to discuss what developments lie ahead in Pathology and what we can do to prepare or take advantage of these. Delegates will learn about new technologies, procedural developments and lines of research that are driving the future of pathology.

View conference agenda.

Places are limited, so please register early to avoid disappointment. Register for early bird now!

 

Dr. Kaplan to speak on Artificial Intelligence at Pathology Horizons 2018

Cirdan is pleased to announce that Dr. Keith Kaplan, publisher of the industry’s leading pathology blog, tissuepathology.com will be joining the Pathology Horizons 2018 speaker panel. Dr. Kaplan’s presentation will be on: “Artificial Intelligence: What it means for Healthcare and Pathology.”

 

About Dr. Kaplan

Dr. Kaplan is a native of Chicago and a graduate of Michigan State University and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He completed residency training in anatomic and clinical pathology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC. While at Walter Reed, Dr. Kaplan was named Resident of the Year, and in conjunction with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Dr. Kaplan founded and directed the Army Telepathology Program. This Program connected 25 hospitals internationally for consultation via telepathology. Dr. Kaplan was also with Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota as an Associate Professor of Pathology of Mayo Medical School. Read more on Dr. Kaplan

About Pathology Horizons

Pathology Horizons is an annual CPD conference focused on the future of pathology. Delegates will learn about new technologies, procedures and lines of research that are driving the future of pathology. This year the conference is being held in the five star Lough Erne Resort, Co. Fermanagh in N.Ireland from 13-15 September 2018.

View conference speakers and find out more  on how to register.

Early Bird Tickets now available.

Hear from Dr. Buckley on the “Application of Liquid Biopsy to the Detection and Treatment of Ovarian Cancer”

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Niamh Buckley of Queen’s University Belfast to our panel of speakers for this year’s Pathology Horizons Conference in N. Ireland.

Dr. Buckley’s presentation, entitled: “Application of Liquid Biopsy to the Detection and Treatment of Ovarian Cancer” will focus on a project that she is currently working on.

About Dr. Buckley

Dr Niamh Buckley graduated from Trinity College, Dublin in 2002 with a First Class Honours Degree in Biochemistry.  She then carried out her Ph.D training in the Department of Oncology (Queen’s University Belfast) under the supervision of Prof. Paul Harkin.  Following this, she then worked as a post-doctoral researcher with Dr Paul Mullan in the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology (Queen’s University Belfast).  During this time she investigated the role of the breast and ovarian tumour suppressor gene, BRCA1, in stem cell regulation and mammary gland differentiation.

Dr Buckley was awarded the prestigious Breast Cancer Now Fellowship in 2013 to develop novel biomarkers and therapeutic strategies in BRCA1-mutant and/or triple negative breast cancer.  In 2016 she was appointed as a Lecturer in Personalised Medicine and Pharmacogenomics in the School of Pharmacy (Queen’s University Belfast).  Her research focuses on the integration of in vitro, in vivo, bioinformatics and pathology approaches to identify key pathways underpinning poor outcome breast cancer and use detailed knowledge of this biology to identify appropriate targeted treatment options, personalising therapy in an area of unmet clinical need.

About Pathology Horizons

Pathology Horizons is an annual CPD conference focused on the future of pathology. Delegates will learn about new technologies, procedures and lines of research that are driving the future of pathology. This year the conference is being held in the five star Lough Erne Resort, Co. Fermanagh in N.Ireland from 13-15 September 2018.

View conference speakers and find out more  on how to register.

Early Bird Tickets now available.