Digital Pathology

When videocameras and analog PC frame cards became widely available in the early '90s some software developers tried applying digital techniques to help histopathologists with their routine microscopic diagnosis and grading of prepared biopsy material. The idea of sharing diagnostic skills through telepathology was widely promoted. I call this the 'First Wave'. In general it didn't work, - the PCs were too slow, the expectations were too high, and the cameras weren't good enough yet for making  diagnostic-quality images in microscopes.  Later on the PCs got faster and digital CCD cameras with small pixels came along, but still the long-awaited revolution didn't come. Maybe the software was difficult to use... Now we are at the start of the Third Wave - the era of turnkey whole-slide imaging and evidence-based diagnosis...

SaltSpring rambles

Life on The Rock! A few years ago we moved  from a comfortable village in the English countryside to the West Coast of Canada - on a rocky hillside with Douglas Fir, Lodgepole Pine, Arbutus and some amazing views.

People and the Past

"Out of monuments, names, wordes, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stones, passages of bookes, and the like, we doe save and recover somewhat from the Deluge of time" [Lord Bacon].