Paper ID: 2307.05519

Physical Color Calibration of Digital Pathology Scanners for Robust Artificial Intelligence Assisted Cancer Diagnosis

Xiaoyi Ji, Richard Salmon, Nita Mulliqi, Umair Khan, Yinxi Wang, Anders Blilie, Henrik Olsson, Bodil Ginnerup Pedersen, Karina Dalsgaard Sørensen, Benedicte Parm Ulhøi, Svein R Kjosavik, Emilius AM Janssen, Mattias Rantalainen, Lars Egevad, Pekka Ruusuvuori, Martin Eklund, Kimmo Kartasalo

The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in digital pathology is limited by technical inconsistencies in the production of whole slide images (WSIs), leading to degraded AI performance and posing a challenge for widespread clinical application as fine-tuning algorithms for each new site is impractical. Changes in the imaging workflow can also lead to compromised diagnoses and patient safety risks. We evaluated whether physical color calibration of scanners can standardize WSI appearance and enable robust AI performance. We employed a color calibration slide in four different laboratories and evaluated its impact on the performance of an AI system for prostate cancer diagnosis on 1,161 WSIs. Color standardization resulted in consistently improved AI model calibration and significant improvements in Gleason grading performance. The study demonstrates that physical color calibration provides a potential solution to the variation introduced by different scanners, making AI-based cancer diagnostics more reliable and applicable in clinical settings.

Submitted: Jul 7, 2023