A INTERACTIVE MAP FOR VISUALIZING, TEACHING AND COLLABORATING ON KIDNEY HISTOLOGICAL LESIONS

Introduction: Histological images provide crucial information about renal diseases. Organizing and visualizing these images from various perspectives is essential for nephrologists, pathologists, students, health care workers, computer scientists interested in computational nephropathology, to examine histological patterns and recognize how similar lesions present in different diseases. Currently, most nephrologists and nephropathologists build custom diagrams or rely on spreadsheets together with image files to build their knowledge base. Unfortunately, this form of organization is not flexible and incorporating new information or changing existing information requires a laborious and cumbersome process. OBJECTIVE: To address the aforementioned problem, we developed an interactive web-based visualization tool that accesses an image database of kidney histological lesions and displays the information in a flexible circular hierarchical format. METHOD: The visualization tool is based on a standard spreadsheet format in which nephropathologists can write the information associated with lesion images: Nosological diagnosis, pathological anatomical diagnosis, renal compartment, staining, and morphological changes. The compact visualization of the hierarchy is built on the fly based on the available information for each image. RESULT: By using this tool, the pathologists can navigate the hierarchy, including zooming and panning, collapse and expand branches, search for a specific keyword, and change the hierarchy order. Additionally, the pathologists can see and change the details of each image displayed on the right panel. Different pathologists can collaborate by uploading new images and adding new lesions. The flexibility of changing the hierarchy order allows the pathologists to reorganize the images based on different aspects, including aggregating the data by staining, nosological diagnosis, and explore how the images are related. CONCLUSION: The interactive web-based visualization tool enhances the organization and examination of renal histological images by providing a flexible, circular hierarchical format. This tool facilitates easy navigation, searching, and collaboration among pathologists, allowing for the dynamic reorganization of images based on various criteria such as staining and nosological diagnosis.