Assessment of Clinical Utility of Digital Morphology Analyzer UIMD PBIA in Leukopenia Samples

Background: Recently, digital morphology analyzer use to compensate for the disadvantages of manual counting in white blood cell (WBC) differentials is increasing.In this study, we evaluated the accuracy and throughput of UIMD PBIA (ANI CO., Korea), a newly developed digital morphology analyzer, in samples from patients with leukopenia.Methods: A total of 159 samples from patients with leukopenia were divided into four groups according to the degree of leukopenia (group 1: WBC 1.010 9 /L, group 2: 1.0-2.010 9/L, group 3: 2.0-3.010 9 /L, group 4: 3.0-4.010 9/L).We analyzed and compared the accuracy and throughput of UIMD PBIA using 23,358 WBC images obtained from the samples.Results: UIMD PBIA was 97.5% accurate in all samples and over 90% accurate in cell types except abnormal lymphocytes.Blasts showed a statistically significant correlation (r> 0.7) between manual count and UIMD PBIA.When both experts counted more than 1% blasts or immature granulocytes, the UIMD PBIA showed 100% positive agreement with the manual count.The turnaround time of UIMD PBIA was shorter than that of manual count in groups 1 and 2 compared to that in groups 3 and 4. Conclusions: Although some areas in abnormal cell misclassification need to be improved, UIMD PBIA provides quick and accurate results for WBC differentials in samples from patients with leukopenia.If applied selectively according to the WBC count and patient diagnosis, UIMD PBIA could be useful in clinical practice.