It is estimated that on average, every two minutes a woman in the US is diagnosed with breast cancer.1 Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in Amercican women, with more than 260,000 new cases expected to be reported in 2019.2
The majority of women with locally advanced and operable breast cancer will undergo chemotherapy prior to their surgery (neoadjuvant therapy or NAT) to reduce the size of the tumor(s).3
A study conducted by Sunnybrook researchers aimed to assess the residual breast cancer cellularity after NAT using digital pathology technologies, including PathcoreSedeen.
Leveraging Image Analysis Techniques with Digital Pathology
With latest technological advancements in digital pathology, there is potential to leverage image analysis techniques to obtain more accurate metrics and reduce pathology workload.
The team at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre completed an assessment of residual breast cancer cellularity after NAT (view the study here). A Post-NAT-BRCA data set was compiled using 96 whole slide images of representative sections from breast resections in patients with residual invasive breast cancer following NAT.4 Histologic sections were prepared and digitized to produce high resolution, microscopic images of treated breast cancer tumors.5
Included in the data set are expert pathology annotations of tumor cellularity and cell types made in PathcoreSedeen™ and provided as Sedeen annotation files (view study data set here).
Using PathcoreSedeen™
Throughout this study, Pathcore’s powerful Sedeen platform was leveraged to create expert pathology annotations that can be easily viewed and shared. PathcoreSedeen is the most advanced whole slide image viewer available for personal use.
Sedeen’s universal virtual slide viewer supports a variety of whole slide image formats including: Aperio SVS, Leica SCN, Hamamatsu NDPI, Zeiss MRXS, VisionTek SVSlide, other TIFF-based formats, and JPEG-2000.
The markup and annotation tool support drawing tools like, rulers, arrows, rectangles, ovals, and freehand. Annotations can be exported in XML format for use in other programs.
Powerful image stacking, alignment, and transparency controls make it easy to visualize protein expression and localization. The multi-modality overlays lets users relate multiple serial sections and track changes that occur at various depths in tissue. Sedeen also provides tools to manually coregister images and make direct comparisons between images acquired using different modalities (MRI, CT, ultrasound) or stained using different antigens.
Sedeen comes with built-in analysis tools, but users can also create their own analysis algorithms using Pathcore SDK. SDK is a versatile algorithm development platform designed for building and validating image analysis algorithms.
Try PathcoreSedeen
Leverage the power of PathcoreSedeen with our free download. Sedeen is freely available for personal, academic, and non-commercial uses.
If you require more functionality for clinical or research purposes, learn about PathcoreFlow. PathcoreFlow provides a web-based solution for collaborative teams. Work online with ease, organize your team’s data, collaborate easily, integrate your systems, and much more. Learn more about PathcoreFlow and schedule an online demo.
Sources
1 https://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/breast-cancer-facts
2 https://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/breast-cancer-facts
3 https://wiki.cancerimagingarchive.net/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=52758117
4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-50568-4
5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-50568-4