The Digital Slide Archive: A Software Platform for Management, Integration, and Analysis of Histology for Cancer Research

TLDR

Cancer research generates vast amounts of histology glass slides that can be digitized into high‑resolution whole‑slide images, yet current commercial digital pathology software makes managing, visualizing, sharing, and quantitatively analyzing these large datasets complex. This article introduces the Digital Slide Archive (DSA), an open‑source web‑based platform designed to streamline digital pathology workflows. DSA enables investigators to organize large collections of histologic images, link them to clinical and genomic metadata, and, through its open‑source architecture, extend functionality with additional tools. Cancer Res 77(21): e75‑78; ©2017 AACR.

Abstract

Tissue-based cancer studies can generate large amounts of histology data in the form of glass slides. These slides contain important diagnostic, prognostic, and biological information and can be digitized into expansive and high-resolution whole-slide images using slide-scanning devices. Effectively utilizing digital pathology data in cancer research requires the ability to manage, visualize, share, and perform quantitative analysis on these large amounts of image data, tasks that are often complex and difficult for investigators with the current state of commercial digital pathology software. In this article, we describe the Digital Slide Archive (DSA), an open-source web-based platform for digital pathology. DSA allows investigators to manage large collections of histologic images and integrate them with clinical and genomic metadata. The open-source model enables DSA to be extended to provide additional capabilities. Cancer Res; 77(21); e75-78. ©2017 AACR.