Visiopharm · Pathology image analysis software

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  • Visiopharm Welcomes Louise Armstrong as Chief Commercial Officer

    Visiopharm Welcomes Louise Armstrong as Chief Commercial Officer 

    Visiopharm is delighted to announce Louise Armstrong Ph.D. as its new Chief Commercial Officer. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Louise is highly experienced as a Life Science Commercial Director and has an impressive track record in business development in international markets.

    Based in London, Louise brings extensive global sales skills with her and will be instrumental in driving Visiopharm’s rapid expansion following significant investment.

    “Louise is a veteran of digital pathology, both within research, and on the commercial side, and brings a wealth of accomplishments with her to the Chief Commercial Officer role,” said Michael Grunkin Ph.D., CEO, and co-founder of Visiopharm. “She takes a consultative approach to sales – helping customers find the best possible solution for them – a value that makes her exceptionally well-aligned with the culture at Visiopharm.” 

    Louise joins Visiopharm from Random 42, where she developed a commercial strategy for the private equity-backed medical animations agency and has previously driven global growth at Andor Technology as Global Sales Director. In her new role, she will be responsible for the company’s sales team worldwide.

    “It’s an exciting time to join Visiopharm,” she said. “With two decades of experience identifying and driving growth opportunities, this is an unmissable opportunity for me to support the company as it continues to grow its presence – and get its message and category-leading products out around the world. I’m looking forward to getting started.”

    Following a €13.3 million investment in 2018 to fuel its international growth, Visiopharm is growing rapidly in both revenue and size. With a headcount approaching 100 employees, Visiopharm is the largest quantitative digital pathology software company in the world.

    Do you want to know more – contact us

  • Visiopharm Earns Acclaim from Frost & Sullivan

    Visiopharm Earns Acclaim from Frost & Sullivan for Transforming Anatomic Pathology with its Cross-platform Software Solutions

    Visiopharm’s quantitative image analysis software suite uniquely offers a secure, scalable, agnostic platform that helps pathologists and researchers alike address the quality and cost challenges in drug discovery and cancer diagnostics

    Based on its recent analysis of the global digital pathology software solutions market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Denmark-headquartered Visiopharm A/S with the 2019 Global Company of the Year Award. The company has accelerated anatomic pathology’s digital transformation with its end-to-end digital pathology software solutions, Qualitopix™, and Oncotopix®. The platforms leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to integrate digitized, high-throughput pathology lab workflows for improved diagnostic accuracy, increased productivity, and cost savings.

    “Visiopharm uncovered and quantified two particularly important error sources in the diagnostic workflow–histological staining and manual image reading and interpretation,” said Unmesh Lal, Program Manager at Frost & Sullivan. “In many countries, pathology labs using immunohistochemistry/in situ hybridization stains rely on external quality assessment (EQA) programs to maintain staining quality. With Qualitopix™, Visiopharm became the first and only solution provider supporting EQA organizations with a software platform that allows them to improve the efficiency and scalability of their activities.”

    Qualitopix™, a novel, patented platform technology, helps pathologists administrate quality runs and scalability through computer-assisted stain quality assessment. The digitized slides facilitate interactions with pathology labs, which, in turn, optimizes resource utilization. Moreover, the administration platform supports and facilitates protocol review with participating labs that fail the proficiency testing. The solution is rapidly gaining acceptance as the standardization and quality of staining with diagnostic tissue-biomarkers is central to achieving precision pathology and sustainable cancer healthcare.

    Meanwhile, Oncotopix® addresses the critical pain point of significant inter- and intra-reader variability in diagnostic tissue pathology. It achieves this by combining image analysis, machine learning, and artificial intelligence with workflows supporting the analysis of massive data sets, data management, reporting, connectivity to laboratory information management system and picture archiving and communication system, and compatibility with all image/slide formats.

    “Its fully automated software suite offers reproducible, quantifiable, precise data, helping pathologists read and interpret regions inside and outside of the tumor as well as tumor heterogeneity. Currently, Visiopharm has more than 100 APPs published, providing full flexibility for biopharma and academic research,“ noted Lal. “The company’s strategically located subsidiaries in Sweden, the UK, the US, and re-sellers in Asia serve customers across Europe, North America, and Asia. With plans to expand its global distributor network, and wider integration with partners, Visiopharm is all set to capture a greater market share and entrench itself in the market.”

    Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents a Company of the Year award to the organization that demonstrates excellence in terms of growth strategy and implementation in its field. The award recognizes a high degree of innovation with products and technologies, and the resulting leadership in terms of customer value and market penetration.

    Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

    Do you want to know more – contact us

  • Corista and Visiopharm Integrate Capabilities to Offer Enhanced Digital Pathology Experience

    The integration of the two platforms provides immediate access to quantitative image analysis from within Corista’s digital pathology workflow suite

    Corista, an integrated pathology solutions leader, is excited to announce our integration with Visiopharm, a global provider of image analysis software. Corista will extend direct access to Visiopharm’s Oncotopix® from within its award-winning DP3® comprehensive workflow suite.

    Corista’s DP3 is the digital pathology platform of choice for major medical organizations seeking to create a seamless pathology workflow that integrates with all major digital systems, including all whole slide scanners (WSI) and major laboratory information systems (LIS). The addition of Visiopharm’s quantitative image analytics for analyzing data and images provides pathologists with powerful tools to improve their workflows.

    The DP3 platform provides pathologists with embedded capabilities for reading cases, presenting tumor boards, collaborating with colleagues, supporting remote location consults, and facilitating a range of research and educational processes. With today’s announcement, Corista and Visiopharm provide additional ease and powerful functionalities for pathologists while archiving the resulting charts and image insights directly within DP3. Physicians can access the Visiopharm algorithms directly from their DP3 Dashboard and no longer need to leave their desks to access a stand-alone terminal to conduct image analytic routines. Pathologists’ access to Visiopharm’s Oncotopix product suite from within DP3 extends the reach of valuable image analytics while reducing the time to perform each routine.

    “Partnering with Visiopharm is an important extension of Corista’s commitment to providing a complete laboratory workflow solution for analytics, streamlining the work environment for pathologists as they continue to deliver the most comprehensive, up to date, and timely patient care,” Corista Founder, President and CEO Elizabeth Wingard said. “This addition to our platform will extend the use of analytics to a wider range of pathologists as they access these capabilities from inside the Corista platform, receiving results from each analysis directly into the case being reviewed.”

    “We are pleased to add Corista to our partner community, strengthening our support for the integration of solutions that create a more streamlined workflow for pathologists,” said Amanda Lowe, Senior Vice President of Visiopharm. “Our joint customers will benefit from a digital pathology experience that will deliver improved efficiency and standardization.”

    The integration between the two platforms has been completed and is available for installation to existing customers.

  • DICOM – a Standard Under Construction

    As pathology is going digital our need for standardization is plain as day. For this DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) is a necessary step on the standardization journey offering independence on scanners and connected software solutions. However, the road to standardization comes with a series of bumps along the way.

    DICOM makes medical imaging information interoperable. Its core function is to integrate image-acquisition devices, PACS, workstations, VNAs and analysis software from different manufacturers such as Visiopharm. People are actively developing and maintaining it to meet the evolving technologies and needs of medical imaging, and it is free to download and use (source: https://www.dicomstandard.org). 

     

    ​​Not quite there yet


    In my opinion, DICOM isn’t developed enough to be used as an out-of-the-box solution. We’ve taken the first steps in using DICOM in clinical practice and have gotten quite far since I wrote about standardizing digital pathology in 2014. Nonetheless every customer who joins DICOM today will be doing pioneering work and should be aware of it.

    There is more to DICOM than meets the eye, as DICOM doesn’t only consist of the file-format, but also a series of standardized communication components. 

    In recent Connectathons, it has been demonstrated that it is possible to use DICOM to create a vendor-spanning configuration consisting of a scanner, archive, and viewing. However, there is still too little practical experience on how such systems behave and prove themselves in routine operation over a more extended period. 

    ​The missing piece – or at least one of them

    There is still an important component missing to have a complete DICOM scenario, and that is the IHE-PaLM/DICOM compliant communication with the Pathology LIS/LIMS. The standardization committees (WG26 / IHE-PaLM) are just now considering which technology should be the standard in the future. Today a proprietary solution is still needed to enable communication between the scanner and Pathology LIS/LIMS to exchange the metadata.

    From Visiopharm’s point of view, our solution already supports quite a few image formats and DICOM implementations, such as pyramid structure, z-stacks, concatenations, and storage commitment to name a few. However, there are many shortcomings. Alone in reading info from image data, scanners currently only support RGB brightfield scans. Currently, Multispectral/fluorescence images are not supported.

    The potential is there

    All in all, the idea of DICOM is excellent, and the experiences from past Connectathons are quite convincing and promising.  Adding to this, several pioneering hospitals such as VGR in Sweden have implemented a version of DICOM including streaming from VNA.

    However, DICOM in digital pathology still needs time for development, validation, and verification. Every customer who gets involved with DICOM is to be welcomed, as they contribute to advancing the DICOM standard in digital pathology. It is important that they are aware of the given situation and all its consequences if we are to succeed with DICOM.

    Do you want to know more about Visiopharm’s integrations? 

    Download our Connect brochure and find out how Oncotopix® Diagnostics seamlessly integrates with a laboratory’s existing LIS/LIMS, IMS, PACS or VNA system; technologists and pathologists will access the solution through this familiar environment. 

  • Get the Newest Release of VIS

    It’s now possible for you to download the new 2018.9 version of VIS. It includes major improvements to Viewing, APP Development and handling of Overlays. The new release also allows you to run our two new state of the art products within the field: AI Deep Learning and ​Phenomap. 

    Please note that this release is for Research Use Only. Download VIS 2018.9

    ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​New features include

    New and Improved APP Author Dialogue
    All the menus for the APP Author are now in a one-page view. This makes it easier for you to access relevant features and define image classes directly in the APP Author Window.

    You are guided through the different steps of the APP development workflow with our new Quick Guide Help dialogue.

    Free Rotation of Images
    An enhancement of the software now allows you to rotate images freely – Try it out! 

    Wheel Menu Updates

    Easier access to a range of different overlay drawing tools including additions such as an eraser, arrow etc.Enter your text here …

    Training videos

    Watch training videos explaining all the functionalities of the New Wheel Menu and the APP Author dialogue in our Customer Center. You can find them under Training Videos & Webinars – Getting Started – Upgrade to 2018.9.

  • Visiopharm Granted a Worldwide Patent on Alignment of Virtual Slides

    The ability to align and subsequently analyze digitized serial sections is gaining importance for a number of research and diagnostic applications related to tissue based biomarkers.

    Tumor Cell Detection:

     One popular application is tumor detection using tumor markers such as Cytokeratin, Melan-A, or other immunohistochemical (IHC) tumor markers. Also H&E stained tissue sections can be useful for tumor detection, despite obvious and well known limitations in robustness and dynamic range.

    Tumor Micro Environment:

    In research applications requiring a quantitative description, e.g. tumor micro-environment, it is often important to be able to look at the co-localization of multiple biomarkers. Here, the alignment of serial sections is a highly efficient approach (see example above).

    Visiopharm’s Tissuealign™ module on alignment of any number of whole slide images of serial sections was granted first in Europe, and then subsequently in the United States in 2012.

    Visiopharm’s patented alignment technology VirtualDoubleStaining™ (VDS) consists of two crucial steps: First, an alignment at low magnification that handles rotation, translation, and local deformations in the tissue samples. Then a second step where the alignment at high-magnification is based on the knowledge established in the first step, and then used for aligning local regions at high resolution.

    In practical terms, it will be difficult to implement alignment methods with sufficient computational efficiency, speed, and accuracy for whole slide images, without using this approach, which was also the basis for Visiopharm’s patented algorithm.

    This fast and highly accurate technology is implemented in the Tissuealign™ module. The module can be used for a range of practical applications, and is currently being used in routine diagnostics and by leading biopharmaceutical companies for drug development and biomarker discovery. Examples are Virtual Double Staining for tumor cell detection using IHC or a more rudimentary H&E. It is simple and efficient to implement this useful principle either for full sections, and Visiopharm is the only company who also has an efficient integration of this principle with TMA workflows. Any number of serial sections can be aligned, and subsequently analyzed simultaneously using Visiopharm’s suite of image analysis modules.

    There are a number webinars available on Visiopharm’s YouTube channel on the technology: “VirtualDoubleStainingTM for beginners” and you can also view the title “Virtual Double Staining: A New Approach for Combining Biomarkers in Research.”