Comparison of different telepathology solutions for primary frozen sectiondiagnostic

In a retrospective study on a set of 125 cases we compared the following th ree telepathology solutions for primary frozen section diagnosis: ATM-TP (c onnection via ATM), TPS 1.0 (connection via LAN) and TELEMIC (connection vi a Internet), which represent different concepts of telepathological procedu res. A set of 125 routine frozen sections (breast) was selected from the Charite cases of the year 1999. Four experienced pathologists diagnosed retrospect ively all of these cases using the ATM-TP and TPS systems and 53 of them wi th the TELEMIC system. Using the ATM-TP we recorded no false positive (0%), 4 false negative (3.2% ) and 4 deferred (3.2%) cases. Using the TPS we recorded no false positive (0%), 4 false negative (3.2%) and 4 deferred (3.2%) cases. Using the TELEMI C we recorded in 53 cases no false positive (0%), no false negative (0%) an d 16 deferred (30.2%) cases. The average time of 2.2 minutes per case using ATM-TP is also short enough for routine frozen section diagnostic. This is also true for the TPS system with 7.2 minutes per case.