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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Automated histopathological analyses at scale

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Histopathology is the microscopic examination of processed human tissues to diagnose conditions like cancer, tuberculosis, anemia and myocardial infractions. The diagnostic procedure is, however, very tedious, time-consuming and prone to misinterpretation. It also requires highly trained pathologists to operate, making it unsuitable for large-scale screening in resource-constrained settings, where experts are scarce and expensive. In this thesis, we present a software system for automated screening, backed by deep learning algorithms. This cost-effective, easily-scalable solution can be operated by minimally trained health workers and would extend the reach of histopathological analyses to settings such as rural villages, mass-screening camps and mobile health clinics. With metastatic breast cancer as our primary case study, we describe how the system could be used to test for the presence of a tumor, determine the precise location of a lesion, as well as the severity stage of a patient. We examine how the algorithms are combined into an end-to-end pipeline for utilization by hospitals, doctors and clinicians on a Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Finally, we discuss potential deployment strategies for the technology, as well an analysis of the market and distribution chain in the specific case of the current Indian healthcare ecosystem.

Degree

thesis:*
Department dc:contributor.department
Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Grantor dc:publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Year dc:date.issued
2017

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Mohit, Mrinal
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Ramesh Raskar.

Subjects

dc:subject × 1

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.
Language dc:language.iso
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/115457
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/115457

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
MIT
Base URL
dspace.mit.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Mohit, Mrinal. Automated histopathological analyses at scale. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/115457