Fig. 1. The analytical phases of digital pathology.

The pre-analytical phase includes steps involved in tissue procurement, processing and fixation. The analytical phase involves a histology phase (which includes selection of the stain to be used, optimization and validation of the staining procedure) and a digital phase (which includes scanning the slides as whole slide images (WSIs) and curation of the digital library). The post-analytical phase involves data extraction, analysis and interpretation of results. Data extraction is accomplished using human visual analysis and/or machine vision, using human–machine synergistic protocols. Data extracted from the images using human and machine vision are integrated and reported. Data integration can be achieved using computational tools as well as human intuition and domain expertise.