Table 2.

 Comparison between manual and automated screening of sections of breast cancer SLN

	Manual	Automated (supervised)
Staining	H&E or IHC	IHC
Sensitivity to detect micrometastases	Low to moderate	High
Hands on time/section	30–60 sec	1 min*
Costs of hardware	20 k$	100 k$
Digital documentation	No	Yes
Fun factor	Low	High
Fatigue factor	High	Low
Reproducibility	Good	Very good

*Most of the hands on time relates to the preselection of cells from the digitally stored images; the time spend by the pathologist for cytopathological confirmation is very small.

H&E, haematoxylin and eosin; IHC, immunohistochemistry; SLN, sentinel lymph node.