5 research outputs found
Stain Consistency Learning: Handling Stain Variation for Automatic Digital Pathology Segmentation
Stain variation is a unique challenge associated with automated analysis of
digital pathology. Numerous methods have been developed to improve the
robustness of machine learning methods to stain variation, but comparative
studies have demonstrated limited benefits to performance. Moreover, methods to
handle stain variation were largely developed for H&E stained data, with
evaluation generally limited to classification tasks. Here we propose Stain
Consistency Learning, a novel framework combining stain-specific augmentation
with a stain consistency loss function to learn stain colour invariant
features. We perform the first, extensive comparison of methods to handle stain
variation for segmentation tasks, comparing ten methods on Masson's trichrome
and H&E stained cell and nuclei datasets, respectively. We observed that stain
normalisation methods resulted in equivalent or worse performance, while stain
augmentation or stain adversarial methods demonstrated improved performance,
with the best performance consistently achieved by our proposed approach. The
code is available at: https://github.com/mlyg/stain_consistency_learnin
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The Lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on outpatient neurology consultations.
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic prompted rapid changes in outpatient neurology services and there remain unanswered questions regarding its long-term impact. First, what are the lasting changes of the pandemic on demographics and outcomes of new referrals and patients reviewed at outpatient neurology clinics? Safety concerns about virtual consultations during the initial stages of the pandemic were also raised. Has the continual adoption of virtual consultations led to negative outcomes for patients? METHODS: New referrals and first clinic appointments in 2019 (prepandemic baseline) and 2022 (postpandemic) in a tertiary referral centre were compared retrospectively. 7294 referrals (4946 clinic appointments) in 2019 and 6989 referrals (3976 clinic appointments) in 2022 were assessed. Outcomes investigated were rates of referrals accepted, time to clinic consultation, number of outpatient investigations per appointment, rates of discharge and the risk of reassessment. RESULTS: There was a change in triaging practice postpandemic, with more patients being offered virtual assessments. Virtual appointments were offered to a specific suitable cohort of patients. This resulted in a faster time to consultation, fewer investigations, higher rates of discharge, with a reduced risk of reassessment compared with prepandemic patients, and patients postpandemic who were seen face to face. CONCLUSION: Outpatient neurology services have adapted postpandemic by effectively triaging referrals and allocating new patients appropriately to face-to-face or virtual clinics, improving patient outcomes and safety.ni
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The Lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on outpatient neurology consultations
Peer reviewed: TrueAcknowledgements: We are thankful to the EPIC systems team at Addenbrooke’s hospital for assisting in data retrieval.BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic prompted rapid changes in outpatient neurology services and there remain unanswered questions regarding its long-term impact. First, what are the lasting changes of the pandemic on demographics and outcomes of new referrals and patients reviewed at outpatient neurology clinics? Safety concerns about virtual consultations during the initial stages of the pandemic were also raised. Has the continual adoption of virtual consultations led to negative outcomes for patients?MethodsNew referrals and first clinic appointments in 2019 (prepandemic baseline) and 2022 (postpandemic) in a tertiary referral centre were compared retrospectively. 7294 referrals (4946 clinic appointments) in 2019 and 6989 referrals (3976 clinic appointments) in 2022 were assessed. Outcomes investigated were rates of referrals accepted, time to clinic consultation, number of outpatient investigations per appointment, rates of discharge and the risk of reassessment.ResultsThere was a change in triaging practice postpandemic, with more patients being offered virtual assessments. Virtual appointments were offered to a specific suitable cohort of patients. This resulted in a faster time to consultation, fewer investigations, higher rates of discharge, with a reduced risk of reassessment compared with prepandemic patients, and patients postpandemic who were seen face to face.ConclusionOutpatient neurology services have adapted postpandemic by effectively triaging referrals and allocating new patients appropriately to face-to-face or virtual clinics, improving patient outcomes and safety.</jats:sec