Below you will find a variety of display devices designed specifically for viewing digital pathology. If you aren’t sure about your requirements, click on the Buyer’s Guide for some tips to help you get started.
Read the Display Device Buyer's Guide
Choosing the correct display system for your digital pathology applications can depend on a number of factors, including your budget and whether you are planning for occasional or constant use. Here are a few things to consider which may help to guide your choice.
Do you need a standard commercial or a medical display?
Limited budgets are often a reason to choose general, commercial display systems for use in digital pathology, as a medical display system will almost certainly be more expensive. However, medical displays come with a whole range of benefits ideally suited to the pathologist such as color management, higher pixel density and continuous calibration. Medical displays will also last considerably longer so can be replaced less frequently and costs may be spread over a longer time period.
Clearance for clinical use
Do you require a display system that is approved or cleared for clinical use by regulatory bodies in your region? For anatomic pathology labs in the United States wishing to use their monitor screens for diagnosis or remote routine pathology, FDA approval is a major consideration. In some European countries, CE marking can also be a requirement for clinical use. Similar regulatory requirements may exist in your country.
You may also wish to consider the following points when choosing a display system for use in digital pathology.
Resolution
In short, the higher the display resolution, the more details you will be able to see. Images will be less pixelated, have sharper contours and you will be able to display more content at one time.
It is also important however to consider screen size as well as the refresh rate and the pixel density of the display, as these will all impact the perceived resolution.
In terms of screen size, a display of at least 27 to 32 inches is recommended for digital pathology applications in order to fill the user’s natural field of view. Pathological investigation of stained slides requires frequent zooming in and out of images and a fast refresh rate can help you do that with minimal delay and no blurring of the image. A high pixel density will ensure that you can see the complete picture without the slide image losing its crispness. This, combined with a higher resolution and larger screen dimensions, will allow you to see details clearly at any zoom level.
Image brightness and contrast
An image brightness of at least 300 cd/m2 roughly corresponds to what you would see under a conventional microscope which is operating optimally. Remember however that the brightness of many displays will reduce over time and so we would recommend selecting displays that offer much higher brightness levels initially to provide a buffer to allow for the aging of the device.
Consideration of the contrast of the display is important to ensure high differentiation between the darker and brighter areas on an image. A minimum contrast ratio of 1000:1 (static contrast ratio) is often recommended for displays used in pathology diagnostics.
Some displays, particularly medical grade displays, will include image sensors and stabilization technology which can ensure that brightness and contrast levels remain stable over much longer periods of time. Other built in technology can ensure that every pixel of the screen communicates with all others, so that images are always shown consistently as the display ages. This is especially important with LCD monitors. LCD is the most common type of screen you find nowadays because it can offer amazing detail, but performance can become unstable over time.
Colors
For on screen reads in pathology, it is important that monitors are calibrated to established color standards and that this calibration is repeated frequently to ensure color consistency over time. Some companies however can provide displays which are tuned to be specialized in the best rendition of a certain set of colors. In stained pathology slides for example, we see a lot pinks, purples and browns whereas greens and yellows are much less common. You may therefore wish to ask your selected vendor if they can provide displays which are calibrated for the selected range of colors found in pathology.
Image consistency
Related to the above points, Image inconsistency is mainly a phenomenon of lower price displays and can cause an image to appear differently depending upon its position on the screen. This could result in the user having to move the image on the monitor in order to obtain all the information from it. True medical displays will normally include technologies which will be able to compensate for any differences which occur across the display in brightness and colour.
Calibration
Calibration and quality control help to ensure that your pathological diagnoses are consistent and reliable. They allow the user to trust the information they see on the screen and there may be a lower risk of misdiagnosis.
A lot of medical displays contain technologies that track their performance non-stop. This can be software that automatically calibrates your display screen according to specific international agreements (such as DICOM for radiology images or ICC profiles for pathology slides) These displays will often also allow you to configure and run national or local compliancy tests.
Use the filters on this page to help you identify solutions that fit your requirements. You can hit the “compare” button to view specifications of up to five solutions side-by-side.
The specifications on this website are gathered from publicly available online resources; therefore, we cannot claim to be 100% accurate. It is always a good idea to make enquiries with the solution provider if you have doubts or unanswered questions. If the solution provider has registered with Pathology News, there will be a “send enquiry” button available right from the product page to make this even easier for you.
Good luck in your search!
Pathology News Team
To search solutions based on specific requirements, use the filters to the right of the solutions table. Remember, you can compare up to five solutions by clicking the compare button(s) on this page or on the individual solution pages.
Featured Solution Providers
Below you will find a variety of whole slide scanning and image capture devices designed specifically for tissue pathology. If you aren’t sure about your requirements, click on the Buyer’s Guide below for some tips to help you get started.
Buyer's Guide
Choosing the right scanner depends on many factors, including the size of your lab, your slide volume, the assays and applications you are running, your budget and more. There is no one right answer for all situations, so take your time to look at all of the options. Here are a few things to consider in your search,
- Do you require a scanner that is approved or cleared for clinical use by regulatory bodies in your region? For anatomic pathology labs in the United States wishing to use their scanners for remote routine pathology, FDA approval is a major consideration considering different scanners. In some European countries, CE marking can also be a requirement for clinical use. Similar regulatory requirements may exist in your country. If you are unsure, it is worth taking a look at the following article.
- High-throughput lab? Mind speed, capacity & continuous loading capability. If you are in a high-throughput laboratory, scan speed and loading capacity are clearly important qualifying factors when looking at scanners. When looking at scan speed, ask vendors how they benchmark scan speeds. While most solution While most vendors benchmark speed on a 15mm x 15mm tissue, it is not an industry requirement. In addition to loading capacity, ask whether scanners support continuous loading. This gives you flexibility if you have a batch of slides that need to be prioritized in the scan queue.
- Look closely at scan resolution in your comparisons. While most scanners offer 20x and 40x scanning standard, it is important also to consider the scan resolution. This varies widely from scanner to scanner and can make a big difference, especially for diagnostic workflows.
- Do you require both brightfield and fluorescence scanning? Many digital pathology slide scanners now offer combined brightfield and fluorescence image capture. A dual scanner can be a great budget (and space) saver for labs that are performing both chromogenic and fluorescence assays. One thing to consider is that fluorescence scanning can be considerably slower than brightfield scanning. In some scanners, you also need to make physical adjustments to the scanner in order to use the fluorescence module. This can be another time sink. If your brightfield and fluorescence volumes are equivalent, it might be worth considering separate scanning devices.
- If you are multiplexing, what are your channel or biomarker requirements? The number of unique channels available in fluorescence vary greatly from one scanner to the next, so this should be one of your first points of review if your lab is interested in multiplexing. If you are routinely exceeding four channels, filter flexibility and incorporation of technologies which reduce spectral overlap or auto-fluorescence should be considered. For those with higher multiplexing requirements, there are now mass spectrometry-based image capture devices which can facilitate the detection of many biomarkers simultaneously. While these are not typical “scanners”, they offer additional flexibility in assay design.
- Bigger isn’t always better. If you are in a laboratory or department that hasn’t quite made the mental leap to digital pathology or face budgetary constraints to adoption, you might be better off going smaller. Desktop single slide scanners have boomed over the last few years and can now be had for a reasonably low price and with decent scan speeds to boot. This may be just the ticket if you need to demonstrate the value add of going digital to your analog colleagues.
- Frozen sections? Consider live view vs. scanners. While most desktop scanners claim utility for frozen sections, time-to-view is a critical consideration for this workflow. We’ve highlighted a number of real-time, live view instruments which are specially designed for frozen section workflow. Some of these instruments also support whole slide or regional scanning, so take a close look at specifications if this is important to you.
- Z-stacking required? Be aware that “z-stack” does not have the same meaning for all scanners. With some scanners you can z-stack an entire image, while others are limited to a field of view or a small annotated region. Not all labs will require z-stacks, but for a handful of applications it is essential and you should clarify this capability with the vendor. Also, be mindful that z-stack images can take up a lot of storage space, particularly the whole slide variety.
Use the filters on this page to help you identify solutions that fit your requirements. You can hit the “compare” button to view specifications of up to five solutions side-by-side.
The specifications on this website are gathered from publicly available online resources; therefore, we cannot claim to be 100% accurate. It is always a good idea to make enquiries with the solution provider if you have doubts or unanswered questions. If the solution provider has registered with Pathology News, there will be a “send enquiry” button available right from the product page to make this even easier for you.
Good luck in your search!
Pathology News Team
To search solutions based on specific requirements, open the solution filters by clicking the search icon to the right. Remember, you can compare up to five solutions by clicking the compare button(s) on this page or on the individual solution pages. The solution comparison table is accessible through the main menu.
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