BIGR® Integration with the Aperio® Digital Pathology System

When a client requested that BIGR® integrate with their digital pathology system, HealthCare IT responded. The integration requirements included being able to easily navigate between samples in BIGR® and their associated slide images in Aperio’s Spectrum software, which supports their ScanScope® slide scanner. HealthCare IT worked with the client to fully elaborate their requirements and propose multiple solutions. HealthCare IT also worked with Aperio’s professional services group to understand the Spectrum product and its integration interfaces.

The first aspect of this integration was to visually link the two systems. This was accomplished via two URL links in the search results of BIGR®’s Sample Search and Request module: one to display Aperio’s Spectrum window to show all slides for the selected sample, and one to display the H&E image for the selected sample. Through BIGR®’s URL template mechanism, which associates a URL with each sample in the search results, the URLs were easily added to BIGR® via an administrative transaction. This particular integration project also made use of the ability to insert the sample identifier in each URL, which was needed as a parameter for Spectrum.

The second aspect of this integration involved communication between BIGR® and Spectrum. Using Spectrum’s web services Application Programming Interface (API), BIGR® made system-to-system calls to authenticate itself with Spectrum and request the image identifier of the H&E image associated with the BIGR® sample. This identifier was used to display Aperio’s image viewer window.

The benefits of this integration to the client were numerous, including the time saved  navigating between two separate systems and the confidence that the images being viewed in Spectrum and ImageScope were in fact those associated with the BIGR® sample.

The BIGR®-Aperio link is now available to all clients, and is easily enabled through BIGR®’s URL template mechanism.