Bigpicture

Many diseases are still diagnosed, monitored and studied in part on the basis of biological samples that have been mounted on a glass slide and studied under a microscope. Today, that analysis is still carried out by a human pathologist, but what if the slides could be scanned and analysed using artificial intelligence. And what if they could be placed in a repository and made available to the scientific community? These are the questions the Bigpicture project hopes to answer.

To achieve its goal, the project will first create the infrastructure needed to store, share and process millions of (often heavy) image files. Secondly, they will address legal and ethical issues to ensure patient privacy and data confidentiality issues are fully respected.