The Virtual Pathology Research Section at Leeds

The Virtual Pathology research department at Leeds was created as part of the Section of Pathology and Tumour Biology (part of the Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine at the time) in 2003. The department was founded out of the need to drive the emerging slide scanning technology, which had been purchased as a strategic long term investment, aiming to digitise pathology in a similar way to radiology.

Over a decade later, the department is responsible for hosting our collection of 591,091 digital slide images on a server storage facility, which uses 239.6TB. The equipment currently used is a mix of high capacity and specialised digital slide scanners, where on average, we scan approximately 3000 slides per month. These slides are used for supporting pathology research, teaching, external quality assessment (EQA), clinical trials and international collaboration.

The Leeds Virtual Pathology Digital Scanner Installation

Aside from supporting existing pathological practises and teaching, the Virtual Pathology research team are actively involved in developing research tools, algorithms and solutions for improving the accuracy and throughput of diagnostic pathology. The aim of this research is to ultimately benefit patients by providing systems which facilitate faster turnaround times for the pathologist's daily workload, with objective, quantifiable methods for assessing conditions of various diseases.