130: USCAP 2025 DAILY UPDATES | DAY 3

USCAP 2025 Daily Update – Day 3 Recap with Dr. Aleksandra Zuraw

In this episode of the Digital Pathology Podcast, I bring you Day 3 insights live from USCAP 2025—from moderating the MUSE panel on slide-free imaging to exploring regulatory strategies, tech innovations, and collaborations across the digital pathology community.

Get an inside look at how direct-to-digital pathology is transforming workflows, how companies like Techcyte are streamlining AI applications, and why regulatory strategy is as crucial as your scanning tech.

🔬 Key Topics Covered:

• [00:00:00] Behind the scenes: MUSE panel highlights and audience turnout
• [00:02:00] Slide-free imaging and concordance studies with Dr. Levenson and Dr. Rao
• [00:03:00] Regulatory insights from Esther Abels on digital pathology FDA strategy
• [00:05:00] Poster struggles, TikTok pathology posters, and missed moments
• [00:07:00] Techcyte’s new Fusion platform and use across cellular imaging departments
• [00:08:00] On-the-floor interviews with thought leaders and innovators
• [00:10:00] Where does glassless imaging fit into your workflow?
• [00:12:00] Collaboration opportunities and global connections at the MUSE booth
• [00:13:00] Final thoughts on community, education, and digital pathology’s future

🩺 Why This Episode Matters:
Day 3 was packed with inspiration, breakthroughs, and powerful conversations. Whether you’re navigating regulatory approval, researching AI integration, or figuring out how slide-free imaging fits into your diagnostic flow, this update offers real-world insight from experts shaping the future of pathology.

🎧 Listen now for highlights, reflections, and what’s next at USCAP 2025!

Transcript

USCAP 2025 DAILY UPDATE DAY 3

Aleks: [00:00:00] Good morning. Good morning. My digital pathology trailblazers. Today. I'm streaming for you for news microscopy, but wanted to give you a little recap on what happened for me yesterday 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: Obviously, everybody has a different experience and did different things, but. For me, and you're gonna be seeing this on the Digital Pathology Place, website on YouTube and everywhere.

And first, let's start with what we did with MUSE, because I was promoting it and I was talking about it for a long time. Today I was [00:01:00] smart enough to make myself coffee from the hotel room yesterday I didn't, and I suffer souls. It was a big day for us, for the team. For me. I was the moderator of their panel about the slide-free imaging technology, and I think you might see a device I wanna show you.

Okay. There this thing, this white thing that has a little screen at the front is MUSE’s tissue imaging device. The inventor and co-founder of the technology was Richard Levenson. Dr. Levenson was yesterday, one of the panelists. He gave a presentation. Dr. Rao gave a presentation. It's all recorded, and we had a fantastic turnaround, over 120 people, in the room there and we had some people join online. So thank you so much for just doing, you don't even know how much I appreciate it. I was [00:02:00] honored to be able to just be the host of this event and obviously learn new data about the technology, about the concordance, and they're still working on more studies on achieving better concordance, working on some publications in the veterinary space.

So you're gonna be hearing about that and obviously if you're here. Come to the booth because not only can you learn about MUSE, you can also be a guest on my podcast. And yesterday I had Esther Abels who was already a guest on the podcast a few times. So she's a regulatory expert and expert is like not the correct word, she says.

She says, and you will hear it on the podcast. She says that she is a regulatory strategies strategist and. Shoot, I forgot like their, the right names. That what I was asking her. Okay. At which page? Should companies, digital pathology companies specifically because she she does a lot of regulatory stuff, but one of the things that I associate her with was [00:03:00] the part of the Phillips scanner clearance.

So she was in on that regulatory team, and she's also very active at the digital, in the Digital Pathology Association. So anyway, Esther was here and I asked her when, how can you. atreamline the regulatory. It's never streamlined and you always have to collect a lot of documentation and do things like in a very specific way.

But she said two things. First is the strategy. So when you know that you're gonna go that way, go that route. Consult or bring in-house, get information about your regulatory strategy. Once you have the strategy, you work, and then there's gonna be the documentation work. And obviously this is just my high level recap of what she told me yesterday, but if you wanna share your digital pathology experience, it doesn't matter like where you are in the dig on the digital pathology train, and this is an analogy that they brought from [00:04:00] Dr. Anil Parwani, whom I might have on the podcast here as well. I think Dr. Parwani might join. I don't know. We'll see. They are all very busy people, so we'll see what happens. But Dr. Anil Parwani at PathVisions will say, okay, digital pathology train everybody is at different stations, goes out, figures stuff out.

It gets in and the keeps going. And regardless where you are on your digital pathology journey station, you can come and tell me your experience. Guys, I failed with the posters again, so I was so happy yesterday watching with my camera. And, oh, the posters are analog. They're gonna be hanging there now.

They hang there for a specific slot and obviously it's on me, and then they're gone. So MUSE poster was there and I wanted to record the video and I kept missing the presenter, but the co-author of the podcast was Dr. Rao. We recorded the video, but I wanted to watch some more look at the more [00:05:00] posters, but they have specific slots and then new posters come up.

So I need to have a dedicated poster time. I'm gonna do it today if you have a poster that you want me to see. And I much narrated Dr. Meredith Herman. She had the TikTok poster in what? I miss the TikTok poster, so maybe there's gonna be some proceedings or she can maybe share. For sure. She's gonna be sharing this poster on TikTok, so I should go on TikTok.

So Meredith had a poster. I missed it. If you have a poster that you want me to see, I cannot promise it's gonna happen because it already didn't happen yesterday. Drop in the chat, your poster number if you're here. I would love to check it out. And if it's not related to digital pathology. The priority is gonna be lower, but if it is related, I will try to go and visit and maybe make a little video.

If you're there, definitely I would love to interview if that's something that you're up for. So yeah, MUSE panel that's done. So if you are there, fantastic [00:06:00] and thank you so much. If not, I'm gonna be sharing the recording whenever it's available. Our crew that was helping with the video and audio was fantastic and I visited the booth Techcyte booth.

Techcyte is a software company and they now have a software called Fusion that fuses all the product that they products or applications that they had. AI application software applications for anatomic pathology, data pathology slash clinical pathologies and microbiology, and I don't know what else, but basically.

It is a software that multiple, depending on like how the hospital is structured, multiple departments can use, is basically uniting the siloed departments of healthcare, at least the ones that they're image, not image-based, but cell-based. I would say cell needs cellular images. cellular images, [00:07:00]  yeah. Because cytology, microbiology, all this needs the solar imaging.

So they have that and they had socks in their booth. That was so cool. I took, I don't know if I took the socks. I did make a video. I'm actually lagging on posting videos, but the podcast is there. It's gonna be out when it's gonna be out. But I interviewed Dr. Tiffany, and I forgot her last name. Apologies for that.

But Tiffany, if you're watching this ever, just say hi. And the bank of whom, the CEO, we sat together and we recorded today. I'm gonna go there and check out, click the software and get the demo. That was that the and the panel. So what's gonna be happening today? I'm gonna have a few podcast guests here.

At the MUSE booth we just set up, we put up a light, which I don't have right now. So you see a light bouncing off my face from the video display that they have. They have a cool video display here showing the device, like how it works the [00:08:00] instruments. Anyway, so I'm gonna be recording podcasts. I have once sketched for nine o'clock one.

I don't know, I have a couple, but not the full day's book. So if you wanna share your story, you have a poster that I didn't visit and you wanna tell the story, come here. Find me, and if not today, then we can just make an appointment for tomorrow because I'm gonna be here tomorrow is Monday and Thursday, I think everybody goes home.

What I wanted to tell you about were also, so because of the panel, there were audience questions. We had a bunch of, so we had a lot of panelists, meaning I think six panelists and I had questions prepared for them, but then. As it happens in those live events, we were off time, so I had to skip questions that I had prepared for the panelists.

I let the audience ask questions, and if you had questions online and if you have questions about this technology, you can reach out [00:09:00]  to LinkedIn and just send me a message and we're gonna be compiling all the online questions into a spreadsheet where the team is gonna sit down, respond them, and send you the answer.

Yeah, but what happened? I had to skip like half of the questions that I had for the panelists. Give the voice to the audience and let them ask questions. So what we're gonna be doing together, I'm asking those questions to the panelists who are still at the conference, and we're gonna be recording a podcast.

So all this is gonna be available on video, audio, wherever you are interested in this content. And let me tell you what the questions were. So we had like what implications it's gonna have for the patient. So I'm just gonna quickly tell you what this is about. It. Basically, it's glassless tissue imaging.

So instead of, let's see, not everything is out yet because the exhibit hall is not ready. Yes. Anyway. Long story short glass of pathology,  [00:10:00] you image the tissue from the surface instead of making glass light. So everybody comes here and they have their, or everybody, pathologists, they come here, they have their workflow in mind and they look at it and I'm like, okay.

Where could it fit? And the one thing that comes that I, we hear often at the booth is frozen section. So they have a different use case at the moment. And they're in the process of making everything happen so that it can be deployable. And I'm speaking a little bit vaguely on purpose because I just have anyway.

So everybody comes and they have their workflows. It's slightly different. People come from different places from Brazil, UK, yesterday, obviously from US because it's a or USCAP, and they see it and I'm like, and they are like, oh, it would fit here. It would fit there. It would fit when you take biopsies.

This would fit. If you do intraoperative, it would fit here. Here. So my last question was actually me to the audience, [00:11:00] and it's also a question to you. Whenever you hear enough about this technology, what would you use it for in your pathology workflow? What would you add it to? Which workflow? What would you replace it with?

Sorry. No, what would you replace it with it, like where do you see it fitting in the pathology of the future? You know, regardless when it's gonna happen to you. As we heard in the train analogy, it has already happened for so many, like with different technologies, but for many more it has not happened yet.

Or like there are fractions of this happening. That was one question that I actually asked to the audience, but we had veterinary pathology experience with concordance in the panel. We had human pathology experience with concordance. So yeah. I'm gonna be asking these questions in the booth. If you are here [00:12:00] today, still at USCAP 2025, join me.

Join the Muse Pathology team. Are gonna be hanging out here in the booth, showing you the instruments, showing you how the process works, and if you have any questions. Let me know also in this livestream. Another thing that I'm gonna do is be working with Roche to check out their news. The scanner that they have here.

We're gonna hear more about this later today, and I'm gonna do now. I'm gonna talk some social media posts from that past days before the conference, and I let you get ready, and I hope to meet you here. I already met a few digital pathology trailblazers from the US and from abroad. That are listening to the podcast and I cannot like, express enough gratitude for you.

It's fun and we have a relationship even though it may not be light, but that you are interested in this information. [00:13:00]  Digital pathology, just like even if you're just starting for education or when, if you're doing AI in the livestream about AI and the papers. Like the fact that there is capable, that wanna learn about it means we are advancing this collectively.

So I just wanna thank you so much for also being at this conference, paying the money, taking the time to come here and learn and know, obviously not everything is not digital pathology focus, but a lot is, and everybody who came to the booth and who I seen yesterday is interesting. In that. So thank you so much and get ready for the day.

I am looking forward to seeing you and might be interviewing you as a guest on the podcast or for a YouTube video. Have a fantastic day.