Russian experts have developed the first-ever software system for assisting doctors in taking medical decisions in morphological diagnosis of oncological diseases. It is going to considerably improve the accuracy and quality of diagnostics.

One of the software developers, the head of the Pathoanatomical Department of the Russian Children's Clinical Hospital, Dmitry Rogozhin reported about it at the annual Congress of the Russian Association of Children's Hospitals on Friday.

"Earlier doctors used reference books and their own memory when diagnosing patients. There was a probability that a doctor might lose sight of some details and thus make a mistake in diagnostics. The automated system prevents from it and offers all types of a tumor, which correspond to the patient's symptoms and other data", - Mr. Rogozhin pointed out.

According to him, the software objectifies the process of oncological diagnostics and thus provides for better  quality of diagnostics. Now Pathology Assistant already has a section concerning bone tumors, which also belong to oncological diseases. Professor Michael G. Klein, the head of Pathomorphology Laboratory Department of the Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, also took part in development of this section jointly with Dmitry Rogozhin.

The software developed by scientists is similar to histologic atlases and also contains the description of various types of oncological diseases and high-resolution digitized cross-sections of tumors. But, in addition, the sowftware analyzes the patient's health condition data as well as morphological characteristics of a tumor and suggests a number of possible oncological diseases. The pathologist can use these data for deciding the final diagnosis.

"This software is the first step on the way to fully automated process of oncological diagnosis and excluding the probability of mistakes in diagnostics. Such a development is an innovation not only for Russian, but for world medicine as well", - the head of Pathoanatomical Department of Morozov City Children's Clinical Hospital, Alexey Kislyakov reported to TASS.