Building and Deploying Digital Pathology Infrastructure for a Heterogeneous User Base

The flexibility of digital pathology hardware and software solutions today allows institutions to create bespoke solutions to meet individual user needs. We built a centralized infrastructure that integrates a variety of imaging platforms (brightfield, fluorescence, multivendor formats). Results: On top of this diversified hardware, a hybrid solution was compiled that consists of commercial software as well as open source packages. In order to mine these data efficiently, a topdown approach was employed to manage and integrate the various platforms. Custom coding was used to interact with various vendor software and server applications, where needed. Digital pathology involves much more than the acquisition of a slide scanner. At the VUB, we have engaged five different imaging platforms onto a single architecture. We are now storing data from all modalities in a single storage facility, and can manage it through a single access point. The endresult is an interconnected network of heterogeneous scalable information silos. We currently have three main use cases for WSI: education, biobanking, and telepathology. We have about 7 terabytes of data online, and serve 50 users across different research groups and departments.