Tumor region annotation for computational pathology

Define tumor regions, surrounding tissue, and relevant morphological areas in histology slides. Create reviewed labels that follow your specialists’ pathology annotation criteria.
Tumor Region Identification example with source-data annotations and contextual photographs.

Mark tumor-related regions in slide context

Create explicit region labels for the tissue evidence your computational pathology model needs.
Histology tissue section with outlined tumor regions.

Tumor region boundaries

Outline tumor regions according to the inclusion rules specified by your pathology protocol.
Histology with separate tumor and surrounding stromal region annotations.

Tumor and surrounding tissue

Label the neighboring tissue context when the model needs to distinguish tumor regions from other compartments.
Histology with a necrotic tissue region annotated.

Necrosis and related regions

Create separate region classes for necrosis or other task-defined tissue patterns.
Histology with tumor-adjacent stroma labeled as a separate region.

Tumor-adjacent stroma

Mark the stromal regions surrounding tumor areas when that context is required by your pathology model.

Why AI Teams Choose Unitlab

Bring pathology annotation, shared ontologies, expert review, and dataset delivery into one workflow so your team can focus on useful training data.
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Faster Pathology Annotation
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Free Up AI Engineers’ Time
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Lower AI Development Costs

Annotation types for tumor region identification

Match each cellular or tissue task to precise outlines, masks, points, and structured annotation properties.
Histology tissue section with outlined tumor regions.

Tumor region contours

Trace labeled tumor boundaries with polygons while retaining the full slide coordinate context.

Tissue segmentation masks

Represent tumor and other tissue classes as segmentation regions according to the same annotation protocol.

Histology with separate tumor and surrounding stromal region annotations.

Tumor Region Identification FAQs

What is tumor region annotation in pathology?

It marks histology regions assigned to tumor or related tissue classes under an expert annotation protocol, creating evidence for computational pathology model training.

How does this differ from radiology lesion segmentation?

This workflow uses histology and whole-slide tissue images. Radiology lesion segmentation uses medical scans such as CT or MRI and a different imaging context.

Can I label tumor and non-tumor regions separately?

Yes. Define the region classes required by your protocol and use the same ontology throughout annotation and review.

Can I include necrosis or surrounding tissue?

Yes. Add separate classes for those regions when they are part of the task and provide clear examples in the annotation guidelines.

Can labels include both tumor and surrounding stroma?

Yes. Define separate region classes when your computational pathology task needs the tumor boundary and its neighboring stromal context.

How can teams handle uncertain tumor boundaries?

Provide explicit inclusion rules, annotate uncertainty where appropriate, and have specialists resolve difficult regions during review.

Which whole-slide image formats can I annotate?

Supported inputs include SVS, AVS, NDPI, SCN, BIF, SVSLIDE, tiled TIFF, and single-file OME-BigTIFF slides. Tiled navigation lets teams inspect large slides at different zoom levels.

How can pathology experts review the labels?

Reviewers inspect cellular or tissue boundaries in slide context, discuss uncertain regions, and return corrections through the configured workflow. Shared classes keep the annotation protocol consistent.

Are slide coordinates preserved in exported annotations?

Yes. Pathology labels retain the original full-resolution raster coordinate space. Supported formats include COCO, YOLO, and Unitlab Unified Export Format, depending on the annotation data you need.