Review Article Screening for Cervical Cancer Using Automated Analysis of PAP-Smears

License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Cervical cancer is one of the most deadly and common forms of cancer among women if no action is taken to prevent it, yet it is preventable through a simple screening test, the so-called PAP-smear. This is the most effective cancer prevention measure developed so far. But the visual examination of the smears is time consuming and expensive and there have been numerous attempts at automating the analysis ever since the test was introduced more than 60 years ago. The first commercial systems for automated analysis of the cell samples appeared around the turn of the millennium but they have had limited impact on the screening costs. In this paper we examine the key issues that need to be addressed when an automated analysis system is developed and discuss how these challenges have been met over the years. The lessons learned may be useful in the efforts to create a cost-effective screening system that couldmake affordable screening for cervical cancer available for all women globally, thus preventingmost of the quarter million annual unnecessary deaths still caused by this disease. 1. Cervical Cancer Screening Cancer of the cervix uteri is the secondmost common cancer among women worldwide, with more than half a million new cases each year and about half as many deaths. Th