Royal Philips Electronics said Monday it inked a deal with NEC Corp. to package cancer detection software with Philips' new high-throughput pathology slide scanner. The two companies hope to have "initial development results" by the end of the year.

Tokyo-based NEC's software, the e-Pathologist Cancer Diagnosis Assistance System, helps doctors find "regions of interest" and makes quantitative measurements of key structures on pathology slides, Philips said. The system was evaluated with doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

In general, pathologists examine tissue samples that are mounted and chemically "fixed" on glass slides in order to detect cancers. But Philips hopes its slide scanner, which can scan a high-definition slide in under one minute, will make it easier to archive slide images and even improve image analysis.

"Retrieving a particular sample among a jungle of samples, you can imagine if you were to do it digitally, it could be done more efficiently," Steve Klink, a spokesman for Philips, told DOTmed News last year.

Philips' device is already commercially available in Europe for research purposes, Philips said. It does not have Food and Drug Administration clearance for clinical work in the United States.

Last year, Philips signed agreements with Danish software company Dako and German company Definiens to provide analysis software for the device.

The addition of NEC's product will help provide "best in class choices for our customers," a Philips spokesman told DOTmed News by e-mail.

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