A Medical Device Daily

Aperio Technologies (Vista, California), a provider in digital pathology for the healthcare and life sciences industry, reported that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted it patent No. 7,116,440 covering systems and methods for image pattern recognition using vector quantization.

A key challenge in pathology is that it is difficult for pathologists to examine an entire tissue specimen with manual microscopy at high resolution to find rare events or to exhaustively identify significant regions of a biopsy slide, Aperio said. An important benefit of digital pathology is that tissue specimens that are scanned to create digital slide images can be interrogated by computer software at full resolution, including for image pattern recognition. The image pattern recognition technology covered by Aperio’s patent is based on the application of vector quantization, a technique commonly used for the compression of data streams, according to the company.

“We believe that computer-based image pattern recognition, also referred to as CAD (computer aided detection) in related fields like radiology, will become increasingly important in digital pathology,” said Dirk Soenksen, CEO of Aperio. “The image pattern recognition technology covered by this patent is unique in that it does not rely on prior knowledge of image based features, but rather involves statistical comparisons to imagery data that exhibit characteristics of interest. Our results to date are quite encouraging.”

In addition to providing an efficient way to find regions of a digital slide that are similar to previously characterized imagery data, vector quantization also allows searching for exceptions; regions of digital slides which are different from previously characterized images, Aperio noted.

Aperio’s patent portfolio includes more than 30 issued, licensed or pending patents covering the creation, viewing, analysis and management of digital slides.