The comparative pathology workbench: An update

The Comparative Pathology Workbench (CPW) is a web-browser-based visual analytics platform providing shared access to an interactive “spreadsheet” style presentation of image data and associated analysis data. The software was developed to enable pathologists and other clinical and research users to compare histopathological images of diseased and/or normal tissues between different samples of the same or different patients/species. The CPW provides a grid layout of cells in rows and columns so that images that correspond to matching data can be organized in the form of an image-enabled “spreadsheet”. An individual workbench or bench can be shared with other users with read-only or full edit access as required. In addition, each bench cell or the whole bench itself has an associated discussion thread to allow collaborative analysis and consensual interpretation of the data. Here, we present the updated system based on 2 years of active use in the field that generated constructive feedback. The updates deliver new capabilities, including automated importation of entire image collections, sorting image collections, long running tasks, public benches, uploading miscellaneous image types, refining search facilities, enabling use of tags, and improving efficiency, speed, and user-friendliness.