On Edge Computing for Remote Pathology Consultations and Computations

Telepathology aims to replace the pathology operations performed on-site, but current systems are limited by their prohibitive cost, or by the adopted underlying technologies. In this work, we contribute to overcoming these limitations by bringing the recent advances of edge computing to reduce latency and increase local computation abilities to the pathology ecosystem. In particular, this paper presents LiveMicro, a system whose benefit is twofold: on one hand, it enables edge computing driven digital pathology computations, such as data-driven image processing on a live capture of the microscope. On the other hand, our system allows remote pathologists to diagnosis in collaboration in a single virtual microscope session, facilitating continuous medical education and remote consultation, crucial for under-served and remote hospital or private practice. Our results show the benefits and the principles underpinning our solution, with particular emphasis on how the pathologists interact with our application. Additionally, we developed simple yet effective diagnosis-aided algorithms to demonstrate the practicality of our approach.