Abstract
Evaluation of a tissue biopsy is often required for the diagnosis and prognostic staging of a disease. Recent efforts have sought to accurately quantitate the distribution of tissue features and morphology in digitized images of histological tissue sections, Whole Slide Images (WSI). Generative modeling techniques present a unique opportunity to produce data that can both augment the data used to train these models and translate data across different processing procedures both intra and inter-institutionally while providing cost-effective ways to perform computational chemical stains (synthetic stains) on tissue and facilitate the creation of diagnostic aid algorithms. However, a more critical evaluation and understanding of these technologies is necessary before their incorporation into a clinical workflow. We illustrate several potential use cases of these techniques for the calculation of nuclear to cytoplasm ratio, synthetic SOX10 immunohistochemistry (IHC, sIHC) staining for accurate identification of melanocytes, and conversion of hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stain to trichome stain for the staging of liver fibrosis.