IITH with NIMS unveils India’s digital pathology dataset, paves way for disease diagnosis and treatment
IIIT Hyderabad (IIITH) in collaboration with Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), Hyderabad has unveiled publicly available datasets comprising digitized histopathological images of brain cancer and kidney disease (lupus nephritis).
The India Pathology Dataset (IPD) project, is a multi-stakeholder joint venture between academia, hospitals, industry, and the government to digitise slide images of tissue biopsies for reaping benefits that range from reduced risk of damaging physical slides to improved clinical decision-making to improved turnaround time and bettering research opportunities with the help of AI.
As part of the initiative supported by iHub-Data, IIITH installed a whole slide digital scanner at the premises of NIMS, Hyderabad. “Traditionally, tissue samples and biopsies are visualised under the microscope. But by digitising these slides, computers can be used to visualise these images and they can be shared across locations for a collaborative diagnosis with other pathologists,” said Prof Vinod P K, who is leading the curation of datasets on various cancers.
One of the first datasets that has been released is the IPD-Brain dataset in Nature Scientific Data, comprises 547 high-resolution H&E slides from 367 patients making it one of the largest in Asia. “The effective management of all cancers relies on precise typing, sub-typing, and grading,” remarks Dr Megha Uppin, Department of Pathology, NIMS.
Hence this is the first step in brain tumour research where machine learning models can be trained on the dataset to not only explore regional and ethnic disease variations but also enhance diagnostic precision by identifying cancer subtypes too, she added.
“The diagnosis of brain tumours is now largely based on molecular genetics. Plus, the number of techniques required for giving an accurate WHO diagnosis of brain tumours is ever increasing with pathologists having to standardize and implement these in routine practice. AI in brain tumours can bridge this gap to diagnose the molecular abnormalities to make a cost effective and accurate diagnosis,” stated Dr Megha adding that the with the current shortage of specialized neuropathologists, AI can aid the peripheral institutes and hospitals in availing help from specialized doctors through digital pathology.
While a beginning has been made by curating a dataset on brain tumours, efforts are underway to expand the dataset to include other cancers such as breast cancer, lung cancer, colorectal, oral and cervical cancers. NIMS is also contributing to curating the dataset on lung cancer.
In addition to the cancer datasets, the project has also compiled another on lupus nephritis. Lupus is a kidney disease that occurs when the immune system attacks the kidneys. “AI also helps in overcoming the problem of interobserver variations in class subtyping of lupus nephritis,” stated Dr Megha.
The relevance of IPD is manifold. The open source nature of the dataset makes it an excellent resource for other researchers who are looking to analyse data or willing to go further and create new AI models. Terming it as one of first few instances of open source medical data from India for human good, Prof Vinod said that a second whole slide scanner system has also been set up at IIITH campus and is available for anyone who wishes to use it. There are dental colleges as well as corporate hospitals currently using the scanner. The dataset itself can also double up as a valuable aid in education. What’s unique about this project is that it’s India-specific. So long researchers relied on datasets based on US population, for histopathology studies. This is truly the first-of-its-kind for India.
Source: Pharmabiz