Digital pathology world tour

OBJECTIVE: Digital pathology (DP) is currently in the spotlight and is rapidly gaining ground, even though the history of this field spans decades. Despite great technological progress, the adoption of DP for routine clinical diagnostic use remains limited. METHODS: A systematic search was conducted in the electronic databases Pubmed-MEDLINE and Embase. Inclusion criteria were all published studies that encompassed any application of DP. RESULTS: Of 4888 articles retrieved, 4041 were included. Relevant articles were categorized as “diagnostic” (147/4041, 4%) where DP was utilized for routine diagnostic workflow and “non-diagnostic” (3894/4041, 96%) for all other applications. The “non-diagnostic” articles were further categorized according to DP application including “artificial intelligence” (33%), “education” (5%), “narrative” (17%) for reviews and editorials, and “technical” (45%) for pure research publications. CONCLUSION: This manuscript provided temporal and geographical insight into the global adoption of DP by analyzing the published scientific literature.