AI Transparency in Digital Pathology

A special issue of Diagnostics (ISSN 2075-4418). This special issue belongs to the section "Pathology and Molecular Diagnostics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2025 | Viewed by 236

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica ed Elettronica, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, 09123 Cagliari, Italy
Interests: pattern recognition; biomedical engineering; EEG; MEG; brain networks

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Guest Editor
Department of Medical Sciences and Public Health, University of Cagliari, 09042 Monserrato, Italy
Interests: atherosclerosis; markers of colorectal cancer; fetal programming of adult diseases; beta-thymosins; nephrogenesis; histology of liver diseases

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) have permeated the digital pathology field. ML and DL tools specifically developed for whole-slide image (WSI) analysis may enhance the diagnostic process in many fields of human pathology and allow for more consistent results, providing valid support for detecting multiple biomarkers that expert pathologists miss.

Despite all these advantages and promising results, the introduction of these tools in clinical practice needs to be revised. The reproducibility of DL models applied to WSI analysis and the absence of explainability and interpretability of these models, which appear as “black boxes”, represent crucial points, and often a barrier, for the transition from research to clinical workflows. It is time to rethink the approach of artificial intelligence to pathology, aiming to reach high levels of reproducibility and explainability.

This Special Issue aims to cover recent advances in digital pathology by collecting papers that make proposals of a high-quality, robust, easy-to-use, and transparent processing pipeline, which can help ensure the validity and the explainability of AI models applied to histopathology in clinical workflows.

Dr. Matteo Fraschini
Dr. Gavino Faa
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Diagnostics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • digital pathology
  • artificial intelligence
  • explainability
  • reproducibility
  • whole-slide image
  • feature extraction
  • deep learning
  • machine learning
  • image analysis

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

11 pages, 500 KiB  
Review
Artificial Intelligence Models for the Detection of Microsatellite Instability from Whole-Slide Imaging of Colorectal Cancer
by Gavino Faa, Ferdinando Coghe, Andrea Pretta, Massimo Castagnola, Peter Van Eyken, Luca Saba, Mario Scartozzi and Matteo Fraschini
Diagnostics 2024, 14(15), 1605; https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics14151605 - 25 Jul 2024
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Abstract
With the advent of whole-slide imaging (WSI), a technology that can digitally scan whole slides in high resolution, pathology is undergoing a digital revolution. Detecting microsatellite instability (MSI) in colorectal cancer is crucial for proper treatment, as it identifies patients responsible for immunotherapy. [...] Read more.
With the advent of whole-slide imaging (WSI), a technology that can digitally scan whole slides in high resolution, pathology is undergoing a digital revolution. Detecting microsatellite instability (MSI) in colorectal cancer is crucial for proper treatment, as it identifies patients responsible for immunotherapy. Even though universal testing for MSI is recommended, particularly in patients affected by colorectal cancer (CRC), many patients remain untested, and they reside mainly in low-income countries. A critical need exists for accessible, low-cost tools to perform MSI pre-screening. Here, the potential predictive role of the most relevant artificial intelligence-driven models in predicting microsatellite instability directly from histology alone is discussed, focusing on CRC. The role of deep learning (DL) models in identifying the MSI status is here analyzed in the most relevant studies reporting the development of algorithms trained to this end. The most important performance and the most relevant deficiencies are discussed for every AI method. The models proposed for algorithm sharing among multiple research and clinical centers, including federal learning (FL) and swarm learning (SL), are reported. According to all the studies reported here, AI models are valuable tools for predicting MSI status on WSI alone in CRC. The use of digitized H&E-stained sections and a trained algorithm allow the extraction of relevant molecular information, such as MSI status, in a short time and at a low cost. The possible advantages related to introducing DL methods in routine surgical pathology are underlined here, and the acceleration of the digital transformation of pathology departments and services is recommended. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue AI Transparency in Digital Pathology)
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