Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40059908›Full record

ArticleJournal of pathology informatics2025

Unlocking the potential of digital pathology: Novel baselines for compression.

Maximilian Fischer, Peter Neher, Peter Schüffler, Sebastian Ziegler, Shuhan Xiao, Robin Peretzke, David Clunie, Constantin Ulrich, Michael Baumgartner, Alexander Muckenhuber and 6 more

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of pathology informatics, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Review
  2. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

16 authors.

Maximilian FischerInstitute Division of Medical Image Computing, German Cancer Research Center, (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
Peter NeherInstitute Division of Medical Image Computing, German Cancer Research Center, (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
Peter SchüfflerInstitute of Pathology, TUM School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
Sebastian ZieglerInstitute Division of Medical Image Computing, German Cancer Research Center, (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
Shuhan XiaoInstitute Division of Medical Image Computing, German Cancer Research Center, (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
Robin PeretzkeInstitute Division of Medical Image Computing, German Cancer Research Center, (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
David CluniePixelMed Publishing, Bangor, Pennsylvania, United States.
Constantin UlrichInstitute Division of Medical Image Computing, German Cancer Research Center, (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
Michael BaumgartnerInstitute Division of Medical Image Computing, German Cancer Research Center, (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
Alexander MuckenhuberInstitute of Pathology, TUM School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
Silvia Dias AlmeidaInstitute Division of Medical Image Computing, German Cancer Research Center, (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
Michael GőtzInstitute Division of Medical Image Computing, German Cancer Research Center, (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
Jens KleesiekInstitute for AI in Medicine (IKIM), University Medicine Essen, Essen, Germany.
Marco NoldenInstitute Division of Medical Image Computing, German Cancer Research Center, (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.
Rickmer BrarenDepartment of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
Klaus Maier-HeinInstitute Division of Medical Image Computing, German Cancer Research Center, (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Digital pathology offers a groundbreaking opportunity to transform clinical practice in histopathological image analysis, yet faces a significant hurdle: the substantial file sizes of pathological whole slide images (WSIs). Whereas current digital pathology solutions rely on lossy JPEG compression to address this issue, lossy compression can introduce color and texture disparities, potentially impacting clinical decision-making. Whereas prior research addresses perceptual image quality and downstream performance independently of each other, we jointly evaluate compression schemes for perceptual and downstream task quality on four different datasets. In addition, we collect an initially uncompressed dataset for an unbiased perceptual evaluation of compression schemes. Our results show that deep learning models fine-tuned for perceptual quality outperform conventional compression schemes like JPEG-XL or WebP for further compression of WSI. However, they exhibit a significant bias towards the compression artifacts present in the training data and struggle to generalize across various compression schemes. We introduce a novel evaluation metric based on feature similarity between original files and compressed files that aligns very well with the actual downstream performance on the compressed WSI. Our metric allows for a general and standardized evaluation of lossy compression schemes and mitigates the requirement to independently assess different downstream tasks. Our study provides novel insights for the assessment of lossy compression schemes for WSI and encourages a unified evaluation of lossy compression schemes to accelerate the clinical uptake of digital pathology.

Indexed as

Feature similarityLossy compressionWhole slide images

Identifiers

PMID40059908
PMCPMC11889581

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.