A growing number of AIs cleared for clinical use is finally available: The AI-assisted Pathologist

Abstract

As more pathology laboratories are transitioning to a digital workflow, the availability of commercial Artificial Intelligence assistance systems is also increasing. Today nearly 40 such products approved for diagnostic use are available. This article provides an overview of the most widely addressed use cases, including Immunohistochemistry scoring for breast cancer and non-small-cell lung cancer, Gleason grading for prostate cancer, or metastasis detection in lymph nodes. While automation alone already promises an increase in efficiency that may help to bridge the growing gap between supply (pathology work force) and demand (histological testing), this article introduces another category of Artificial Intelligence products that go beyond just mimicking today’s established score. Various Artificial Intelligence are being introduced that detect genetic alterations or stratify risk, directly from the standard hematoxylin & eosin staining. Finally, a brief outlook explains how basic AI models are currently finding their way into computational pathology and promise to further accelerate product developments by decreasing the time-to-model.