Experience and present status of telepathology in the National Cancer Center Hospital, Tokyo

The optical fiber high definition television (HDTV) live image system with a remote control microscope is an ideal telepathology system. Diagnostic accuracy with this system is high enough for pathology consultation. However, it is very expensive to set up. The integrated services digital network (ISDN)-HDTV still image system using public telephone lines presently available in Japan INS 64 (64 kb/s), is not suitable for frozen section diagnosis and diagnosing difficult lesions. However, it functions very well for cytology consultation. When INS 1500 (1.5 Mb/s) becomes available in practice, it can substitute the optical fiber-HDTV live image system in terms of cost and efficacy. Pathologists must become accustomed to making diagnosis from images on the monitor. They must be very careful in making diagnosis, when images are transmitted from institutions without pathologists, since selection error may occur at the time of frozen section and at the time of transmission of images.