HistoFluency Study

Welcome to the HistoFluency Study! In this online study, you will be among the first to use an AI-enabled tool designed to accelerate the development of key visual diagnostic skills for pathology.

Eligibility: First-year residents in pathology residency programs with an anatomic pathology component (e.g. AP, AP/CP) are eligible to participate.

In this study, you will:

• Use an AI-powered learning tool to practice identifying "benign," "malignant," and "atypical" findings in H&E-stained breast and prostate images.
• Develop "fluent" visual pattern recognition skills, a key trait of expert visual pathologists that leads to more efficient and accurate diagnoses.
• Measure your progress in a standardized test phase.
• Our goal is to develop new tools that can help accelerate pathology education. Your participation is a vital part of this.

Time commitment: about 2 hours total, spread out over 2-3 months to fit your schedule:

• Session 1 (~50 minutes): available any time from now until August 15, 2025.
• Session 2 (~40 minutes): available 14 days after session 1, expires 21 days after session 1
• Session 3 (~20 minutes): available 60 days after session 1, expires 90 days after session 1
• Don't worry about tracking the dates - we will send you email reminders when each session becomes available.

Technical Requirements: You will need to use a laptop or desktop computer (i.e. not a smartphone or tablet) with a stable internet connection to complete the experimental tasks. We recommend using the Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari browsers.

Earn up to $50 for your time:

• $10 for each session completed
• $20 additional bonus if all three sessions are completed (bringing total to $50)
• Payments will be provided within one week of completing the final session, via an e-gift card of your choice.

Opportunity for Co-Authorship: This research is intended for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The two top-performing participants who complete all three sessions will be invited to collaborate as co-authors on the resulting manuscript. This would involve (for example) helping to interpret the results from a trainee's perspective, providing feedback on the manuscript, and helping to shape the introduction and discussion sections.

Data sharing/security: Anonymized/de-identified data from your participation (e.g., which images you see, response times) may be included in publicly available datasets to support upon science. All of your personal information (name, email) is stored separately from your experimental data, will never be linked to any public research data, and is used only for communication, scheduling reminders, and compensation.

Informed consent and confidentiality:

• Your participation in this study is voluntary. All of your personal information (including whether or not you participated) will be kept confidential.
• You may view our full consent document here. Submitting the form below indicates your informed consent to participate.
• You are free to withdraw from the study at any time, for any reason. If you withdraw, only the study coordinator will know, your data will be permanently deleted, and you will still be compensated for any sessions you have fully completed prior to withdrawal.
• The protocol for this study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Boston Children's Hospital (Protocol ID: X08-10-0457)

Frequently asked questions: View FAQ

Contact information:

Study Coordinator:

• Morgan B. Talbot (mtalbot@mit.edu), MD-PhD Candidate, Harvard Medical School

Principal Investigators:

• Gabriel Kreiman (gabriel.kreiman@childrens.harvard.edu), Professor of Ophthalmology, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
• Richard N. Mitchell (rmitchell@bwh.harvard.edu), Professor of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School