Special Issue on Computational Pathology: An Overview

Abstract

The field of Digital Pathology has grown considerably in the past few years. The early years focused primarily on the scanning and remote viewing of histopathological images. However, as the use of tele-pathology has become widespread, the emphasis on digital pathology has increasingly moved towards the application of image analysis and artificial intelligence techniques to maximize the meaningful information that can be extracted from tissue sample with the final aim of aiding the diagnosis of the pathologist. Interestingly, with advancements in computational algorithms for digital pathology, the types of problems that researchers have embarked on have evolved from focusing solely on decision support for the pathologist to also to begin to prognosticate disease outcome, predict tumor biology and also therapeutic response.

This special issue of Medical Image Analysis is a collection of 15 original and peer-reviewed articles that focus on the growing field of Computational Pathology. The call for papers of the special issue was launched on the 31st of July 2019 with a deadline of the 31st December of the same year, with Drs Anant Madabhushi and Constantino Carlos Reyes-Aldasoro serving as Guest editors for the special issue. In total 38 manuscripts were received. These manuscripts underwent the regular MedIA peer-review process with an average of 3 reviewers per manuscript. Fifteen manuscripts met both the high standard for acceptance of the journal and deadline for publication and these were accepted into the special issue. Twenty-one manuscripts were rejected and two were transferred to a different journal. The average review and processing time, from the day papers were submitted until final acceptance was approximately 45 weeks.