SigTuple AI100 from HORIBA Medical

HORIBA Medical, one of the global leaders in the medical diagnostic arena which designs, develops and distributes worldwide in-vitro diagnostic systems mainly destined for biological analysis in medical laboratories, proudly collaborates with SigTuple, a MedTech company that develops AI-powered digital microscopy solutions, to accelerate adoption of SigTuple’s AI100 across India and SAARC region.

Peripheral blood smear review is a powerful and essential diagnostic tool that provides clinicians information about a variety of diseases, such as blood-related cancers, anemia, viral and bacterial infections, hematological disorders, and many other life-threatening medical conditions.

Currently, 98 percent+ labs all over the world do this review manually – completely dependent on the availability of a skilled pathologist. SigTuple leverages AI and robotics to automate the error-prone and inefficient manual microscopic review of samples in laboratories.

AI100 is a smart robotic microscope, which has built-in intelligence to identify the monolayer in the slide, and then uses the in-built camera to digitize the monolayer. The images are then uploaded on the cloud platform, where the AI model (Shonit) is trained to extract and classify every cell. This AI-based cell classification is presented to a pathologist on a cloud platform, standardizing the quality and increasing the efficiency of the pathologist multifold.

Shonit reports on morphological and statistical parameters for the following:

• White blood cells (WBC) differential – providing a 7-part WBC differential with atypical cells and blasts. nRBCs are a separate reported parameter;
• Red blood cells (RBC) – both size- and shape-based morphology, with gradings (based on ICHS guidelines); and
• Platelets (PLT) – platelet count, visual evidence-based classification for normal/macro platelets, giant platelets and platelet clumps.

The analysis report produced by Shonit can be accessed via any web browser, and can thus be reviewed remotely. The visual evidence-backed report produced by Shonit removes the need for the pathologist to have physical access to the slide. The cell location and pre-classification done by the AI, not only standardizes the reporting quality, it also reduces the review time per slide, thereby increasing the efficiency of the pathologist significantly.

Further, showcasing the microscopic view of the slide remotely drives seamless transition from manual microscopy to digital microscopy, and enables tele-pathology – allowing pathologists sitting in one location to look at cases across the world!

Enabling tele-pathology provides two key advantages:

• Access to a qualified pathologist. The diagnostics infrastructure needs to be as close to the patient as possible, but often the limiting factor is the availability of a trained reviewer. Now, with tele-pathology becoming a reality, access is no longer a barrier; and
• Collaborative review. Second opinions are now just a minute away. No need to send the sample or the patient to another site, multiple pathologists can now collaboratively review a sample, without being hindered by geographical separation.

Both the hardware (AI100) and the AI-based analyzer (Shonit) are CE certified.

Differentiated report
To enable the labs to offer further value-addition, SigTuple provides a visual evidence-backed report, which can be embedded into the existing CBC reports through the LIMS integration. This could potentially redefine the way a CBC report looks like!

With a vision to replace the manual microscope in the laboratory, SigTuple’s AI100 currently automates the microscopic review of the two most common tests coming to the lab – peripheral blood smear and urine, with plans to add AI capabilities for more tests on the same platform.

AI100 is complementary to HORIBA’s hematology analyzers, and together HORIBA will offer complete automation for the hematology lab, driving the adoption of AI-powered digital microscopy across the region.