Comparison of Different Telepathology Solutions for Primary Frozen Section Diagnostic

Abstract

In a retrospective study on a set of 125 cases we compared the following three telepathology solutions for primary frozen section diagnosis: ATM‐TP (connection via ATM), TPS 1.0 (connection via LAN) and TELEMIC (connection via Internet), which represent different concepts of telepathological procedures.

A set of 125 routine frozen sections (breast) was selected from the Charité cases of the year 1999. Four experienced pathologists diagnosed retrospectively all of these cases.

Using the ATM‐TP and TPS systems and 53 of them with the TELEMIC system. Using the ATM‐TP we recorded no false positive (0%), 4 false negative (3.2%) and 4 deferred (3.2%) cases. Using the TPS we recorded no false positive (0%), 4 false negative (3.2%) and 4 deferred (3.2%) cases. Using the TELEMIC we recorded in 53 cases no false positive (0%), no false negative (0%) and 16 deferred (30.2%) cases.

The average time of 2.2 minutes per case using ATM‐TP is also short enough for routine frozen section diagnostic. This is also true for the TPS system with 7.2 minutes per case.