CONTRIBUTION OF THE TELEPATHOLOGY AND COM PUTERS IN PATHOLOGY OF THE TUMORS

The histologic or cytologic diagnosis of a tumoral lesion may be somet imes very difficult to do even for a senior pathologist. Nevertheless, it is necessary to recognize a malignant process with reliability and security The usual way to solve some difficult problems is firstly to search documentations in books or atlas and then to discuss the slide s in common. Sometimes it is necessary to dispatch the original docume nts to a national or international expert. Now computers are used in a ny private or public department of Pathology. Some new informatics dev elopments allow to send good digitized pictures to an expert and to di scuss with him. It is also possible to elaborate a data base of digiti zed images which can be edited on CD-Rom. We describe the development and the use of these technics in France and elsewhere. It seems that t hey could have an increasing role for quality assurance in tumoral pat hology.