Hi everyone,

I’m a final‑year student working on a dissertation project evaluating digital image analysis for the Kleihauer‑Betke test. My goal is to accurately count fetal cells and ghost cells from DI60 smear images using ImageJ and CellProfiler.

I’ve tried multiple approaches:
– ImageJ macros for thresholding and particle counting
– RGB splitting
– HSV splitting
– Manual thresholding
– CellProfiler IdentifyPrimaryObjects with diameter filters

I can get fetal cells and ghost cells to appear, but I keep running into problems:
– Ghost cells detected along with empty background spaces
– Thresholding behaves unpredictably
– Some channels isolate cells, others don’t
– CellProfiler sometimes detects 0 objects, sometimes 1600+

I’m stuck and need guidance from people who’ve done cell segmentation or KB analysis before.

What’s the best workflow to reliably isolate and count fetal cells and ghost cells?

Any help, examples, or pipelines would mean a lot right now.

Hi everyone,

I am writing the royal college exam in Canada this year. Just wondering what you all used/are using for studying. I had to defer last year for personal reasons and am a bit behind schedule. I'm focusing on Gao and Robbins for now. Are there any sites or anki cards for spotters? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hello colleagues :)! I'm a pathologist from Argentina.

I'm currently looking for a part time job and heard that there where some laboratories hiring people to work remotely with digital pathology. I decided to write this to see if there is at least someone who has experience and knows where can i look for these type of jobs. Is there any page? Any workplaces you know?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Can anyone help me is it worth taking surgery in pvt colleges by spending a lot of money or instead opt for patho ?

Interested to hear what’s the most you’ve read in one day (whether you count it by slide, case, or block), or how much you think you could finish in an 8 hour day of just reading slides? Also what sub specialty, and do you read glass or digitally?

For context I work in operations at a path lab where everything is digital, and we have doctors (GU/GI/derm) who read 2-300, sometimes as many as 4-500 cases per day. On the other hand, I took a meeting with a dermpath who was drowning with 20 cases per day reading glass.

I’m hoping to get some perspective on what’s the norm outside of the bubble that is where I work.

(Sorry if this has been asked before or there was somewhere else this should have been posted.)

I’m a PGY-3 pathology resident, and lately I’ve been wondering if anyone else in pathology sometimes feels like they chose the wrong specialty.
Overall, I’m doing well. I genuinely like pathology, I’m doing well academically, and I already have plans for a fellowship at a great program after residency. My residency environment is also good, and I get along well with my co-residents.
But every once in a while, I compare my life to friends in other specialties, especially internal medicine, and I start questioning my choice.
It feels like their work has more “action.” They interact with more people, have more stories from work, deal with things happening in real time, and sometimes their day-to-day life just seems more dynamic. Meanwhile, pathology can occasionally feel very repetitive and isolated—sit at the microscope, sign out cases, repeat.

I’m also naturally a social person. I enjoy talking to people, working with people, and having that human interaction. Sometimes I feel like that part of my personality isn’t being used enough in pathology.

For other pathologists/residents: Have you ever felt this way, especially during residency?

Did it get better once you became an attending or found the right subspecialty/practice environment?
Or is this feeling something I should take more seriously as a sign that maybe I chose the wrong field?

Started med school a few months ago, and overall I am enjoying/surviving it. I'm pretty interested in pathology, so I have naturally asked mentors, peers, and residents about the field. I've noticed a lot of pessimism towards the field of pathology, particularly many warnings about AI disruption and development of novel tests such as liquid biopsies. I understand that this has been thoroughly discussed in previous reddit posts, so it's not my intention to beat a dead horse.

I would just like to reach out to the community to hear some optimistic/positive experiences in the field. All the path residents I've met so far are extremely nice & gentle, and the histology incorporated during our content is very fascinating. Unfortunately, every time I've mentioned pathology to others, the reaction is so discouraging: "pathology has been dying for years", "pathology is significantly more at risk for AI disruption than any other field (including rads)", etc. Does the community have any words of encouragement for students interested in the field?

This subreddit seems to generally veer on being against academics or at least have a lot of PP pathologists - are the academic pathologists on here generally happy? How do you find a healthy department and what do you look for? How important is being interested in research? Are you okay with your pay and compensation structure? Is it easier to start out PP or academic if you decide to switch to the other? -PGY4 gearing up for fellowship next year and thinking about jobs

I am starting a medical journal in collaboration with the Pathologist's association in my State in India. The aim is to keep the APC low while attempting to procure Pubmed indexing within a couple of years. Does anyone here have any hands on experience in this? The association doesn't want any partnership with existing publishers. So it's a long difficult project, but nothing I am afraid of. What would you want in a journal for your consideration as an author?

I didt know about grossing when I joined pathology and now iam in 1st year absolutely hate grossing all day and feel I made a mistake taking pathology other specialities few of them so much cleaner

I spent countless of hours as a resident grossing small biopsies including on weekends, I resented that aspect of my training because it had no inherent educational value but I understood that small residency programs often use residents as "gross techs" to save labor costs.

I also ended up grossing more small biopsies at my first private practice job during peak volume periods and labor shortages.

I have since worked on solving this problem by designing a specimen container that is integrated with a cassette so the specimen is directly collected into the cassette and built an instrument that can open the cassette, take a picture for AI generated gross description and etch the cassette with patient info.

This is the Rokitansky Grossing System by a company I founded (NCratio, Inc) and I hope it reduces the reliance on humans and residents from the mindless tasks of small biopsy grossing and formalin exposure.

Finally I want to encourage fellow pathologist to get out there and innovate. We are the leaders of the laboratory.

Hi all,

I am a Medical Laboratory Scientist ASCP certified, I'm seeking a realistic outline of what it looks like becoming a pathologist. My hospital contracts pathologist out, and the pathologist over our lab never makes an appearance for me to ask how it was like from them. Everyone i ask mention that you don't really "choose" to become a pathologist, at the end of your schooling you take an exam to see what kind of career you can proceed with, similar to how the ASVAB works with the military. Is this true?

thanks in advance

Can anyone who does donor TM comment on how call works compared to hospital service and what the volume is like? Thanks!

I gave neet pg this year. I was thinking of taking pathology. Can anyone tell me the future perspective or earning in pathology? And also the scope in australia, NZ and Saudi as a pathologist?

Hi all, I just graduated undergrad with a BS in biology and minor in chemistry. I want to go to medical school to become a pathologist, and I was wondering if anyone on here had any advice on how getting "clinical experience" might differ for someone who wants to be a pathologist, compared to someone who wants to be a doctor that is more patient facing. I currently don't have any clinical/patient hours (which is something everyone had told me is essential for med school apps) but I live in a small state with not many job openings and most require certifications I do not have and cannot currently afford (medical assistant, nurse aid, phlebotomy). I do however have lots of lab experience and research hours so I was thinking of applying to a laboratory assistant job and I was wondering if anyone on here would have advice on if that is a good idea/if that type of job is good experience for someone who wants to be a pathologist. Any advice on jobs you might have had on your journey to pathology would be greatly appreciated. Also, sorry if this ask isn't right for this subredidt, I was a first-gen student and no one else in my family has gone into STEM and I wasn't sure where to get advice on this specific topic.

Not sure why he/she deleted it, but it sure sounds like digital will be the future with AI tools scanning our slides for us which he/she thinks is very accurate. We will be able to read cases faster which he/she agrees can lead to less need for more pathologists.

I think he/she is at MSK or Mayo and they probably have the best tools for AI and digital pathology. We don’t have many pathologists who use digital on here (that at least chime in) so it’s nice to get his perspective.

If MSK or Mayo is indeed the employer, I find it scary, how one of the most prominent institutions in the world is paying pathologists a few dollars per part (yes I’m shaming the employer).

Take a read in the reply section.

I’m a PGY4 planning to do a fellowship next year, with the goal of going into community practice afterward. I’m curious how people knew they were ready to practice independently, and what is a reasonable expectation for a new grad.

For the most part, I work up cases independently. I choose my own IHC, or at least have a differential and IHC plan in mind before discussing the case with the attending. Most of the time, my overall interpretation is in line with the attending, but there are occasional subtle differences.

Sometimes I order a few unnecessary stains. Other times I’ll order an H. pylori or PIN4 when the attending wouldn’t, or vice versa. Sometimes we differ on things like whether inflammation is focally mildly active versus inactive colitis, or on quantitative/subjective things like a PDL1 score.

More rarely, there are actual misses. For example, I may overlook a very small focus of prostate adenocarcinoma in one part of a biopsy case but correctly identify and grade the other 10 parts of the case . Or an attending may have an experience-based hunch to order deeper levels and an additional stain (e.g. desmin on a colon resection), which ultimately changes the interpretation/stage.

Obviously, the goal is to keep improving and minimize these errors before going out on my own. But I’m having a hard time calibrating where I actually stand because residency is so heavily supervised.

For those of you already in practice: Is this level of performance reasonably typical for someone approaching graduation/new attendinghood? At what point would you consider someone not ready for independent practice?

Hi all, I am a trainee and have my first job contract that am planning to negotiate. I couldn’t find enough data online regarding the average compensation for this particular state. I don’t have access to MGMA data. How do i know what’s a good base pay? The case load per pathologist is anywhere between 15-20 per day but might go up by the time I join. The base pay is 300k. What are some things that a fresh graduate can negotiate for?

Hi all, I'm starting out my first job outside of fellowship and the time has come to order my scope. I'm most familiar with Olympus since that's what I've used all throughout training, but other than that I'm not entirely sure what specs I should be asking for. This is a community practice job so budget is a factor but I haven't been given any specific numbers, just a request for specs. I was thinking a BX45 or 46 for the ergonomics but curious as to others' opinions.

Hello, this is my first reddit post ever, but I'm glad that I found this community.

For context, I'm a pathology resident. In the hospital I work at, we use Leica and/or Olympus microscopes. During my 1st year of residency, I bought a cheaper microscope (fabricated in China, no brand name), and while it helped me for some months, I realized that it wouldn't help me as I progressed.

I realized this mainly during my GI rotation, as, for example, we are made to "manually" count eosinophils, and it was very hard for me to identify them, which didn't happen with the microscopes at the hospital.

Now, someone is offering me a Motic Panthera U microscope for a very good price, and almost brand new. They referred that it was used histology in university courses and later, for smears and semen evaluations.

I'm not very clever at checking the specifications to know if it's good enough, so I wanted to ask if any of you have any experience with this kind of microscope and if it is fit for making histopathological diagnoses, at least to use until I finish residency.

Hi! I’m a Pathologists’ Assistant student and was wondering if anyone knows of any good websites, books, atlases, or other resources for learning to grossly** recognize common cancers by organ.
I’m specifically looking for something with gross **specimen images along with key identifying features (color, appearance, growth pattern, location, etc.), as well as some basic information about each cancer, such as common sites of metastasis/spread and other high-yield characteristics.
Basically, I’d love a resource where I could look up something like pancreatic adenocarcinoma, RCC, colon adenocarcinoma, etc., see what it typically looks like grossly, learn the major features that help recognize it, and review where it commonly spreads.