Paige expands AI tools for breast cancer diagnosis to reduce subjectivity, manual tasks for pathologists

Original from: Fierce Healthcare

Paige is enhancing its suite of AI-enabled solutions designed to support pathologists in the diagnosis of breast cancer while decreasing subjectivity and the tedium of manual analysis.

Paige Breast Detect, Paige Breast Neoplasm, Paige Breast Mitosis, Paige Breast Lymph Node and HER2Complete are all included in the Paige Breast Suite. Paige’s suite launched last March, helping usher in a trend of AI-empowered radiology and pathology tools. The AI-powered tool for researchers was developed to help catch cases of breast cancer that have metastasized to nearby lymph nodes.

The company is now building on that technology to support every step of breast cancer diagnosis and streamline pathologists’ day-to-day workflows.

“At the heart of every Paige offering is the highest level of patient care,” said David Klimstra, M.D., founder and chief medical officer at Paige, in a press release. “With the addition of Neoplasm and Mitosis detection to our Breast Suite, we assist pathologists in gaining greater efficiency and confidence in everyday tasks like mitotic counting.”

Mitotic counting, related to density and growth measurement, is a critical element in determining tumor grade, a notoriously subjective and tedious phase in diagnosis. The enhanced suite includes an AI-powered tool for mitotic counting. Paige Breast Detect and Neoplasm support pathologists in better prioritizing the review of slides or entire cases in order to improve workflow and ensure that critical cases are addressed early.

Paige Breast Suite is built from the same core technology that gained Paige FDA approval for its Prostate Detect solution. The digital diagnostic company forged its technology out of thousands of slides from hundreds of global institutions, executives said.

The platform works alongside the interpretations of pathologists by spotting groupings of tumor cells. AI backing aims to increase accuracy and efficiency by bringing attention to tumors of all sizes including easily missed micrometastases. All suspicious areas on the slide are highlighted for the overseeing pathologist to review.

Pathology as a field has “greyed” as diagnostic specialties like radiology and pathology have seen dwindling numbers of young professionals entering the field. Despite experts quelling the fears of new graduates by stating that diagnostic technologies will remain human-centric, some are concerned that the future of pathology will lie in the hands of AI.

“There are too few pathologists for the increasing demands of breast cancer diagnosis,” Klimstra said. “Paige tackles the pathologist shortage by supporting breast cancer diagnosis and simultaneously providing greater confidence, reducing false negatives and increasing pathologists’ efficiency.”

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Breast cancer is the No. 1 cancer among American women and the leading cause of death in the group overall. Players in the industry have looked to breakthrough AI technologiesas a path to increased and earlier diagnosis.

Paige started off the year by partnering with tech giant Microsoft. The digital pathology company gained investment to develop and deploy its offerings. Paige also adopted Microsoft Azure as its cloud provider and the home of its FullFocus, an FDA-cleared whole-slide image viewer. The deal allowed for Paige to gain the title of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare partner and allow Microsoft to enhance its own offerings for healthcare customers.

"The application of technology to help clinicians and researchers further enhance patient care and, in many cases, provide life-saving treatment is a core tenet for Microsoft in health and life sciences,” said Tom McGuinness, corporate vice president of global healthcare and life sciences at Microsoft, in a statement. “We look forward to further collaborating with Paige and giving Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare customers the ability to harness the power and promise of AI in digital pathology.”

In March, Paige also expanded its partnership with Leica Biosystems to enhance its use of image management and AI in global digital pathology workflows. Leica chose Paige as its preferred provider of software-as-service digital pathology image management and viewing.

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Source: Paige expands AI tools for breast cancer diagnosis to reduce subjectivity, manual tasks for pathologists