Title: An experiment in the reporting of observed features of cancer images to aid in the development of an Image Description Language for pathologists

Authors: Jon Plumley, Richard Gatward, Alison Todman, Raouf N.G. Naguib, Mark K. Bennett

Addresses: Faculty of Engineering and Computing, Biomedical Computing and Engineering Technologies Applied Research Group (BIOCORE), Coventry University, CV1 5FB, UK. ' Faculty of Engineering and Computing, Cogent Applied Research Centre, Coventry University, CV1 5FB, UK. ' Faculty of Engineering and Computing, Biomedical Computing and Engineering Technologies Applied Research Group (BIOCORE), Coventry University, CV1 5FB, UK. ' Faculty of Engineering and Computing, Biomedical Computing and Engineering Technologies Applied Research Group (BIOCORE), Coventry University, CV1 5FB, UK. ' Retired Consultant Histopathologist, UK

Abstract: Variations have been shown to exist in the diagnosis of cancers by different pathologists. We report on an experiment in observation of cancer features. The accuracy of the participants diagnoses showed an expected improvement when plotted against experience. When the number of features reported was plotted against experience the result showed a variation by specialists and those with less experience. The results have provided a platform for the lexicon required in the development of an Image Description Language (IDL) for pathologists to aid in reducing the variations in reporting.

Keywords: IDL; image description language; cancer images; pathology; cancer diagnosis; medical imaging.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2010.051997

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2010 Vol.3 No.3/4, pp.319 - 328

Published online: 08 Feb 2013 *

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