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Cloud file service vendors such as CTERA, Egnyte, Nasuni and Panzura face new competition in the specialized imaging digital pathology space in the form of Bulgaria’s Tiger Technology.
Digital pathology refers to images of pathological specimen glass slides. Slides contain small slices of tissue and may be stained to highlight specific features. Doctors and other health care professionals can examine them for signs of illness or deterioration. Such images must be taken with a special digital scanner and be able to zoom in on details as if you were looking through a real microscope.
Tiger Tech Founder and CEO Alexander Lefterov said: B&F: “We work with various scanning machine vendors and their workflows. [for example Phillips]A module inside the scanner communicates with the API to access cloud data. We are a middleware vendor and integrate our software with these frontend devices. ”
Tiger Technology provides a hybrid multi-cloud file namespace for Windows Server, enabling space-saving file tiering from on-premises servers to inexpensive file and object stores for ancillary backup, archiving, file synchronization, and business continuity security, and disaster recovery benefits. We have several products. Tiger Store on-premises file share. Tiger pools combine multiple volumes into a single pool. Tiger Spaces file sharing among workgroup members. Tiger Bridge cloud storage gateway, sync and tiering product.
In the field of digital pathology, Tiger Bridge software is integrated with scanners to send captured images to public cloud repositories where they can be accessed from anywhere in the world. This means a remote consultant can review the images and help the local medical team make treatment decisions for the patient.
There is another reason why images are sent to the cloud. Actual slides containing biological samples may need to be stored for 10 years or more and should be refrigerated to prevent spoilage and deterioration. Freezing is expensive. Digital scans can be archived in the public cloud cheaper than such refrigeration.
Each scanning manufacturer such as Philips, OptraSCAN, Epredia, Leica Aperio has its own technology and therefore requires its own software integration. API integration connects the scanner to an on-premises file server with Tiger’s software installed. Tiger Bridge software is also used to upload images to the cloud and retrieve images for later access.
The images are huge, potentially 1 million x 1 million pixels, about 2GB per slide, and up to 10 exabytes of images can be ingested per year. Scanning machines are expensive, yet the cost of storing the digital images produced is less than keeping slides in the refrigerator for his ten years.
Encrypting image data prevents analysis and provides a kind of lock-in, so it cannot be encrypted. Also, the data should be anonymized to preserve patient confidentiality. Lefterove says the vendor-neutral format must be maintained to keep customers from being locked in.
Lefterov says there are three phases to collaborating on digital pathology image files.
- Solidification – Send data to the cloud for cost-optimized archiving and continuous data protection with disaster recovery.
- Access Extension – Multi-site sync and share, and support for remote workflows to
- Augmentation – AI and machine learning for analytics and insights to augment human analysis.
Tiger’s cloud storage costs about $5 per TB/month, Lefterov said.
In effect, Tiger has found a dedicated niche cloud file services and collaboration sector within the healthcare market. Established vendors CTERA, Nasuni, and Panzura each already have a presence in the healthcare market, as does Egnyte. The advantage of Tiger is the integration of digital pathology scanners and workflows, and the ability to handle the metadata required for large numbers of digital pathology images.
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