Blurry, unreadable regions of an H&E stained slide image are detected and highlighted with Proscia's AI-powered automated quality control. (Graphic: Business Wire)
May 17, 2022 — Proscia, a leader in digital and computational pathology solutions, has introduced an automated quality control application that leverages artificial intelligence to improve quality and efficiency in data-driven drug development. In launching automated quality control, Proscia is delivering on digital pathology’s first suite of process automation solutions, streamlining manual, repetitive tasks with AI. The company has also released a new version of its Concentriq for Research platform to further unify global pathology operations and centralize data across the connected enterprise.
Life sciences organizations face unprecedented pressure to rapidly develop novel therapies, as the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the potential of the digital transformation in advancing breakthroughs that fight disease. While these organizations have been on the forefront of digital pathology adoption, generating millions of images to fuel a new wave of research, the images often contain quality issues that delay researchers from realizing their full value.
Automated quality control leverages AI that has been trained and tested on thousands of samples to identify commonly-occurring quality issues in every image of H&E stained slides. By reducing the need to manually review these images, it drives significant productivity and quality gains that may enable research teams to:
- Start studies faster: AI that automatically flags common quality artifacts, from air bubbles to blurriness, gives researchers faster access to high-quality data.
- Increase the reproducibility of results: Reliable research results depend on the quality of the data that informs them. The application’s highly accurate AI ensures consistent quality across even the largest data sets.
- Reduce technician burnout: The burden of manual quality control is intensifying as the volume of pathology data continues to grow. Automating this process frees laboratory technicians from a tedious, repetitive task while enabling them to focus on adding more value.
“We are excited to see Proscia’s automated quality control product deployed into day-to-day research practice for non-clinical laboratories,” said Dr. Daniel Rudmann, Scientific Director, Digital Pathology at Charles River Laboratories. “At Charles River, we support approximately 85% of drugs approved by the FDA with our global operations. These types of AI products will help us to get these new drugs to market faster by overcoming a critical, yet tedious, step in our process.”
Automated quality control is available on Proscia’s Concentriq for Research, a singular, secure image and data management platform used by research organizations, including 10 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies. It combines comprehensive functionality for viewing, managing, and analyzing images with powerful AI applications, seamlessly incorporating solutions from Proscia, Proscia’s customers, and other third parties into routine practice. Announced today, the enhanced version of Concentriq for Research further centralizes pathology data across the connected enterprise with robust support for fluorescent images. Research teams can now perform sophisticated analysis of fluorescent images and view results alongside all of their pathology data to identify clinically impactful patterns that lead to new insights.
The launch of automated quality control marks the next milestone in Proscia’s journey to accelerate the adoption of AI in research and diagnostic pathology. The company recently released study results on an AI breakthrough in melanoma detection, which builds upon the technology that powers its DermAI application* for dermatopathology. Proscia is also collaborating with LabPON, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Unilabs, University Medical Center Utrecht, and University of California, San Francisco among other leading academic and commercial laboratories on its AI research and development efforts, including additional process automation solutions.
“Automated quality control is advancing the use of AI among life sciences organizations by unlocking new sources of value today,” said Nathan Buchbinder, Proscia’s Chief Product Officer. “With its launch, we are not only accelerating data-driven research but also beginning to deliver on digital pathology’s first suite of process automation solutions, continuing to augment Concentriq with the broadest portfolio of AI applications.”
To learn more about automated quality control and to see the latest updates to Concentriq for Research, register for “Pathology at Life Speed” on May 25th at 11AM ET. This virtual event for accelerating life sciences research will feature insights from digital pathology and life sciences leaders, including former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb and speakers from Bristol Myers Squibb, Charles River Laboratories, and Google Cloud Healthcare and Life Sciences.
*DermAI is for research use only.
For more information: proscia.com
April 17, 2024 
