Relevance of the College of American Pathologists’ Guideline for Validating Whole Slide Imaging for Diagnostic Purposes to Cytopathology

Whole slide imaging (WSI) allows pathologists to view virtual versions of slides on computer monitors. With increasing adoption of digital pathology, laboratories have begun to validate their WSI systems for diagnostic purposes according to reference guidelines. Among these the College of American Pathologists (CAP) guidelines include three strong recommendations (SRs) and nine good practice statements (GPSs). To date, the application of WSI to cytopathology has been out of scope of the CAP guideline due to limited evidence. Herein we systematically reviewed the published literature on WSI validation studies in cytology.