Dual-Use intelligent Workstation for Pathology Images

Today, there are more military casualties due to disease than to battlefield injuries. Often, however, due to inadequate medical staff in small or remote medical hospitals, these disease-related casualties are improperly treated before return of the patients to the Zone of the Interior. In cases requiring the examination of biopsies or blood smears, the human eye is used to form a picture of the specimen as part of the decision-making process in arriving at the formulation of a treatment plan. If, in difficult cases, the image seen could be referenced quickly by use of computer intelligence to a medical image database and/or transmitted to a remote site for observation by an expert medical specialist, treatment could be improved and lives could be saved. It is the purpose of this report to propose a Phase I feasibility study that would address this problem. The study would be jointly performed under the leadership of the Kensal Corporation (Tucson, AZ) in partnership with Intellipath (Santa Monica, CA) and the Lockheed Missile and Space Division (Sunnyvale, CA). Kensal has already reduced to practice a new invention that permits the lensless formation of images of entire tissue sections and, for the National Institutes of Health, is researching a high-resolution pathologist's workstation for automated diagnosis of breast and lymph node cancers. Intellipath's product, now deployed at almost 300 hospitals throughout the world, incorporates a medical image database for reference in forming diagnostic decisions. Lockheed has produced and deployed at 120 locations worldwide the ICON (Image Communications and Operations Node) that, using DDN (Defense Data Network), permits the distribution of imagery to military installations anywhere. This workstation, if combined with Kensal's low/high resolution PCM (PC Microscope) and the Intellipath image database and expert systems software, would create a workstation, if combined with Kensal's low/high resolution PCM (PC Microscope) and the Intellipath image database and expert systems software, would creat a workstation invaluable for improving both routine and emergency medical care. This combination of existing military and civilian hardware and software, would