129: USCAP 2025 DAILY UPDATES | DAY 2

USCAP 2025 Daily Update – Day 2 with Dr. Aleksandra Zuraw

Welcome back to the Digital Pathology Podcast live from USCAP 2025! On Day 2, I dive into the momentum building across the conference—covering major trends, tech insights, and how digital pathology is no longer just a topic, but a critical tool used to deliver sessions and share knowledge.

From vendor-driven presentations to real-world applications of AI and slide-free technology, this episode explores how digital workflows are being integrated into education, diagnostics, and collaboration on a global scale.

🔬 Key Topics Covered:

• [00:00:00] Day 2 kickoff and society meetings at USCAP
• [00:01:00] Exploring digital talks via touchscreen and vendor-driven sessions
• [00:02:00] How digital tech is embedded into conference presentations
• [00:03:00] Preview of the MUSE Exhibitor Seminar and QR registration
• [00:04:00] Meet the MUSE Panelists: Dr. Richard Levenson, Dr. Rao, and Dr. Jeff Edwards
• [00:06:00] Challenges of digital pathology integration in institutions
• [00:08:00] Conversations about low-cost digital pathology solutions
• [00:09:00] Asian Society of Digital Pathology and regional scanning hubs
• [00:10:00] Updates from PathPresenter, PathAI, and Diaagnexia
• [00:12:00] Poster hall builds, upcoming highlights, and short content plans
• [00:13:00] Call for podcast guests and global collaboration in pathology

🩺 Why This Episode Matters:
Day 2 at USCAP proves that digital pathology is more than a buzzword—it's essential infrastructure for modern diagnostics, education, and global collaboration. From slide-free imaging to low-resource adaptations, we discuss how technology is not only scaling workflows but also making pathology more accessible worldwide.

🎧 Listen to the full episode now and join me as we explore the digital heartbeat of USCAP 2025!

Transcript

USCAP 2025 DAILY UPDATE DAY 2

Aleks: [00:00:00] Good morning, welcome digital pathology, trailblazers. What's up at USCAP? 

Intro: Learn about the newest digital pathology trends in science and industry. Meet the most interesting people in the niche and gain insights relevant to your own projects. Here is where pathology meets computer science. You are listening to the Digital Pathology Podcast with your host, Dr. Aleksandra Zuraw. 

Aleks: It's the second day of the conference. And the meetings have started yesterday. There are meetings of all the pathology societies on the planet, not on the planet in North America, and they filled a whole day with those meetings. So regional, international, everything. So that's what was happening yesterday.

And I was of course looking, they have this huge screen, [00:01:00] huge touch screen, and I was looking at this huge touch screen, so I made this video. It's gonna be on LinkedIn. What are the digital pathology talks at this conference? Obviously it's a lot bigger than just the focus of digital pathology, and I went through this touch screen through all the days and I look at the talks and I'm like okay, this is a vendor technology being presented.

Vendor. Vendor. Like it was very vendor driven and it's not necessarily a bad thing because. Then I was a lunch talking to a pathologist who was giving a different course, a sign out course, and she was telling me, oh, I don't do digital pathology, but I need to present those cases on digital so that the participants can have access to them, or, I can show them live on the screen.

Which I thought, yes, it's no longer such a big deal to just talk about digital pathology, like for digitizing slides. But it [00:02:00] is a method that's now being used to make this conference happen. So I thought that was super cool. And now the things that the vendors present are the more cutting edge stuff the things that the early adopters are working in. You know…

I'm in this new spot with new wifi, with in the connector lounge, and there are flowers and also other flowers. And this is actually sponsored by Muse Microscopy. But that being said, today is the big day of Muse presentation where we're gonna have a super cool guest and I'm gonna be your moderator.

So of course, I'm gonna invite you one last time in this live stream and you will see a QR code on one of the upper corners of my screen. For me, it's this one. It's called USCAP News Panel. This is for those who are joining remotely. There is an option to register for [00:03:00] this remotely, and I just wanna remind you who's gonna be speaking because cool people are gonna be speaking.

It's gonna be Dr. Richard Levenson, who is, his whole research focuses on those slide free technologists, and he's the founder, co-founder of Muse. Then there's gonna be Dr. Rao, who is working on proving this technology, collaborating with Chinese Hospital with Dr. Zoe, and he gathered massive amount of data in a super short period of time to show you what's the concordance between classical glass slides.

I think he also touches in his talks on the concordance with frozen sections and everything that he's gonna be talking about is okay. What about tissue preparation? Because the muse preparation is very non-destructive, so there's gonna be data. It's not gonna be just like, oh, look at us. We're the newest cutting edge [00:04:00] digital pathology technology.

They are showing data. Then Dr. Jeff Edwards, he's a fellow veterinary pathologist, but he also trained at John Hopkins in comparative pathology. He has a master of public health with the focus on zoonotic disease, so very much active in the space of one health. He led the largest digital pathology transformation in the US up to date in the veterinary space in anti laboratories, and he has like first hand experience how it is to transition such a large institution to digital.

And those of you who already do digital, you know that it's not all it's not a phone that you switch on and it actually works when you put your email. Yesterday I had this discussion that with a representative from Nikon, I think we just sat next to each other at breakfast and he was asking, oh, do you know any [00:05:00]  like consultants that would.

Is there, is this a niche in the digital pathology space, consultation for how to integrate digital pathology into workforce? And I'm like, not really. I sometimes consult, but I can consult like at the high level at not at the architectural level of your IT infrastructure in. In your hospital, right? So often the hospitals or the institutions or whoever wants to go digital, they reach out to vendors and then, there's, they work closely with IT.

So I don't know if it's something that could be a job for some that somebody in the digital pathology space, but definitely the integration part is a big struggle. So yesterday I heard, okay, an institution was on the way to going digital. And then they merged with another institution and that, that effort was of course, [00:06:00] put on hold because it totally loses priority.

And if I repeat myself, apologies, I didn't have a coffee. Starbucks was closed when I went. I came here and then I saw there is a different coffee shop. I know some are there behind me, but I only had 10 minutes before the livestream, so I couldn't get the coffee before. Let me know if you're also. At USCAP or not at USCAP, or give me USCAP.

Yes. Or remote, depending on where you're tuning in from. Because if you are here and you would like to be a guest on my podcast, you can come to the booth. The MUSE booth is 528, our exhibitor. Hold for later for the talk that you can. Oh wow. There's a cool question. 

“If there is a digital pathologists here who can sign my reports?” 

Honestly, I don't know. But there are a lot of the many pathologists here and several of them work digitally [00:07:00] and non digitally. So there are networks of pathologists. I think yesterday I talked to a representative from PATHAI and they said, oh, we do the algorithms, but we also have a network.

So PathAI would be the company to reach out to because they have a huge network. He told me, Eric told me that it was 500 people, 500 pathologists who have their normal pathology assignments. But whenever they have capacity, they can take digital cases. So definitely an avenue to explore Anil.

And if you wanna join me on the podcast, just tell me your digital pathology story. I will be at Booth 521. Oh, and this is a question that is a recurring question: “Show low cost digital pathology solution for developing countries.” So when I hear that question and this question comes over and over, I'm thinking that the low cost is going to be the [00:08:00] motor, the manual options with a microscope camera.

And there are companies that offered us this. I think Micro Scan is here. There is company called. Smart In Media that I worked with and also, so I cannot really speak to the cost or anything, but MUSE Technology is promising in reducing the cost of digital pathology. And I also have notes for you. Yeah, that's a big thing.

The Digitize- digitization technologies for developing country, and there is a society, the Asian Society of Digital Pathology. That obviously has a lot of members from those countries They were found founded just last year. Yeah. I talked to Junya Fukuoka at the president of that society at last Path Vision, and he's gonna be here.

And what they do, I think they established centers where people can [00:09:00] scan slides so you can ship the slides there, and then you get them digitized. So the society is kind of taking the lead on how to solve this thing in developing countries. Finally, the booths already, it took. Like 2 days for them to put up those booths.

Now everything looks pretty. And I was talking to the Muse team and I'm like, oh my goodness, they're taking so long. And they said, “Hi. You know what? In our radiology days it would take seven days to put up a booth because it really was truly a construction something. So I stopped complaining. Yeah. And then I also talked to the Pathpresenter team.

So Pathpresenter is some is an application. I use the free version where you can upload your slides. You can also look at other people's slides. This is absolutely for free and you can access it. “Is there any application we can get a report signed?” I would reach to the vendors who have those networks and Pathpresenter would be one of the vendors who [00:10:00]  to reach to because they have a second opinion consultation platform. So I think maybe that's an option. I would look at Pathpresenter. I would look at PathAI. There is also Diaignexia remote pathologies. Service companies look into Pathpresenter and what they say, PathAI and see with them, and they're also labs that are deploying it, but I don't remember the names.

What else? So I was whining about. About how long it takes for the booth, but now everything is pretty, I think everything arrived or what did not arrive is not gonna arrive anymore. So I was talking about Pathpresenters, so that kind of ties into the question. Okay. Low resource. So they have a free version of the platform and there is a paid version where you can look at cases, [00:11:00] do like measurements and all the like full blown suite of an image management system.

They have all kinds of integrations. So they had a webinar before this conference, and the founder is Raj Singh. I saw him yesterday before my, no, after my livestream. He was running. He was like, oh, I catch you later. He's a very busy one, but they have a booth and they have this second opinion module. But what I wanted to tell you, so I'm looking for a collaborator to host.

Live streams for histology, pathology, showing cases like that. So maybe we will have a discussion if that would be a good partnership where I use their platform to stream or to create video videos for my channel, for the Digital Pathology Place. We'll see how that goes if there's, if we can help each other.

And that's it for the update from yesterday. So I was excited about the touchscreen that you will see a post on LinkedIn about where I was looking. [00:12:00] I. At digital pathology lectures, but when I went to the poster hall, so they have analog posters. They were building, it wasn't ready yet.

They were building the poster walls and I'm like, yes, please just put them there and let me look at them when I have time. Because what happened at PathVisions, I was super excited that the posters were digital and so cool, but they only had so many screens and there was only a certain slot for a certain poster.

So of course I missed the slots and didn't look at any posters, and I wanted to show you posters. So this time the posters was gonna be there. I already have appointments with. A few people, and I've heard about a couple of posters that I definitely wanna highlight, maybe as short videos and then later post on social media, on YouTube, LinkedIn, wherever you are listening to this information.

And as a side effect, looking at me. So I. I have that planned already. I think that's enough for today's update. I'm gonna be at Booth 528. [00:13:00]  I would love to hear your digital pathology story. I'm gonna be interviewing people for the podcast and then you can be a guest on the Digital Pathology Podcast and share your story.

I believe that the more people hear about your struggles, your story, the faster we're gonna advance digital pathology in whichever form you are actually doing digital pathology. So another thing for low resource countries, maybe we don't need to do a whole side imaging. Maybe we can do static imaging.

And Dr. Talat Zehra from Pakistan is working very, she's like a prolific researchers on how to implement this. So definitely a person to look at her work at her publications, booth 528 and MUSE microscopy panel in the evening. Join me. I will be honored to see you there and be your host there both virtually and in person.

And obviously if you see me in person walking around with my [00:14:00] camera, just say hi and let's meet in person and I talk to you tomorrow. Bye.