Medical Physics Graduate Program faculty members Megan Russ, PhD (Radiology) and Kyle Lafata, PhD, are co-principal investigators on a newly awarded $20,000 pilot study to apply medical physics principles to digital pathology.
The diverse co-investigator team includes Casey Lee, PhD, Jeff Nelson, MHP (Radiology), Will Jeck, MD, PhD (Pathology), and Diana Cardona, MD (Pathology). Their grant, titled, "Imaging physics characterization of tissue batch effects in digital pathology," will develop a new approach to characterize the impact of tissue processing batch effects (i.e., variability in tissue thickness, staining and acquisition protocol) on digital pathology image quality.
A novel organic, multi-material, multi-contrast pathology phantom (Figure 1) will be fabricated based on tissue microarray technology, which will be used to measure image quality and harmonize information content between heterogenous images. By applying basic medical physics principles, this research will enable better characterization of staining dynamics and image artifacts, leading to enhanced digital image quality and acceleration of novel tissue biomarkers. This project was made possible by the Medical Physics Graduate Program seed funding mechanism, which aims to foster new and promising multidisciplinary research collaborations between faculty members from different academic tracks.
Figure 1. (a) Organic, multi-material, multi-contrast digital pathology phantom design based on tissue microarray technology. (b), (c), (d) Pathology experiments to evaluate digital image quality of tissue processing batch effects, including stain dynamics and sample thickness.