FFEI ANNOUNCE SIERRA COLOUR CALIBRATION TECHNOLOGY
“Sierra colour calibration technology corrects colour and increases uniformity across multi-vendor WSI scanners and enables ground-truth colour standardisation for pathology AI”
November 18th, 2019 – FFEI Ltd, the global developer of award-winning digital imaging solutions, today announced the availability of their patented Sierra colour calibration technology, which ensures colour fidelity throughout the Whole Slide Imaging (WSI) process. The goal of this is to ensure that WSI colour is representative of the ‘true’ colour of a tissue sample and not digitally altered by the scanning process. This guarantees that a pathologist, analyst or AI is working from ground-truth standardised data.
Commenting on the Sierra technology Andy Cook, Chief Executive Officer, FFEI, explains, “The ground-truth colours in pathology are real data, from real patients that require diagnostics based upon reality for accurate and reliable healthcare. In response to this challenge FFEI developed Sierra to address the significant degree of variation in colour that exists between different WSI systems.” Andy continued, “To understand the impact of colour management using this ground-truth calibration slide method, in some instances the colour accuracy is improved more than 700+ fold.”
Sierra corrects colour using a unique histologically stained slide-based device and DICOM compliant ICC profile.
Sierra corrects colour using a unique histologically stained slide-based device and DICOM compliant ICC profile. Making use of the technology is a straightforward process – the whole Sierra slide is scanned; the scan is uploaded to FFEI’s software to ascertain how the WSI device digitally interprets the slides real colour; finally an ICC profile is produced specific to the scanner to correct the digital errors detected. The unique ICC profile metadata can then be used to validate all further scans from that specific scanner – for use in viewing software for human analysis; as corrective data to parallel feed into AI; or embedded in each image by a scanner manufacturer.
FFEI will be showcasing Sierra at the Digital Pathology & AI congress in December, where Rick Salmon, Product Manager for Life Sciences, will be presenting on the subject of colour calibration.
