Abstract：
In clinical routine, the quality of whole-slide images plays a key role in the pathologist\'s diagnosis, and suboptimal staining may be a limiting factor. The stain normalization process helps to solve this problem through the standardization of color appearance of a source image with respect to a target image with optimal chromatic features. The analysis is focused on the evaluation of the following parameters assessed by two experts on original and normalized slides: (i) perceived color quality, (ii) diagnosis for the patient, (iii) diagnostic confidence and (iv) time required for diagnosis. Results show a statistically significant increase in color quality in the normalized images for both experts (p < 0.0001). Regarding prostate cancer assessment, the average times for diagnosis are significantly lower for normalized images than original ones (first expert: 69.9 s vs. 77.9 s with p < 0.0001; second expert: 37.4 s vs. 52.7 s with p < 0.0001), and at the same time, a statistically significant increase in diagnostic confidence is proven. The improvement of poor-quality images and greater clarity of diagnostically important details in normalized slides demonstrate the potential of stain normalization in the routine practice of prostate cancer assessment.
摘要：
在临床常规中，整片图像的质量在病理学家的诊断中起着关键作用，和次优染色可能是一个限制因素。污点归一化过程有助于通过源图像相对于具有最佳色彩特征的目标图像的颜色外观的标准化来解决该问题。分析的重点是由两位专家对原始和标准化幻灯片评估的以下参数的评估：（i）感知的颜色质量，(ii)病人的诊断，(iii)诊断置信度和(iv)诊断所需的时间。结果显示两位专家的归一化图像中颜色质量的统计学显著增加(p<0.0001)。关于前列腺癌评估，归一化图像的平均诊断时间明显低于原始图像(第一专家:69.9svs.77.9s，p<0.0001；第二位专家：37.4s与52.7s，p<0.0001)，同时,已证明诊断置信度的统计学显著提高.劣质图像的改善和标准化幻灯片中诊断重要细节的更高清晰度证明了在前列腺癌评估的常规实践中染色标准化的潜力。
