Updates from the 19th European Congress of Digital Pathology - ECDP 2023

​A good way to detect new developments in digital pathology is to visit the annual congresses of the European Society of Digital and Integrative Pathology. There was a big PiV group travelling to Budapest ECDP2023, curious to learn about the newest developments in digital pathology and eager to do a lot of networking. The event kicked off with the precongress hands-on workshop provided by EMPAIA, where we learned to train an algorithm using QuPath. And of course, the expansive industry exhibition was particularly enlightening, granting us the chance to interact with various suppliers and to bombard them with questions. One fascinating discovery we made was the potential of virtual reality glasses to replace traditional computer screens. This would remote working make quite easy from anywhere without the need of big suitable screens!

PiV contributed to the program with oral presentations from Hrafn about “Deep learning-based segmentation of glomeruli: Detection of erroneous annotations through morphometric analysis" and Patrick about “Pathology process modelling with Petri-nets on event logs". Nazanin presented a poster about “Effect of stain normalization on estimation of kidney fibrosis with image analysis". Sabine chaired the session about “synoptic reporting" and participated in the panel discussion “Advancing cooperation of clinicians and computer scientists". One crucial topic is the evolving role of pathologists in embracing AI tools.​

What are our takeaways? We noticed a shift towards more technical presentations compared to previous congresses, with a strong focus on research. Still largely missing are reports on implementation of AI tools. Both for research groups but also for practising pathologists and laboratory scientists, we believe it would be immensely valuable to have more hands-on experiences, like the precongress workshop, where attendees can actively engage with and explore the practical aspects of these tools.​