Philips announces digital pathology scanner with native DICOM JPEG XL output (www.philips.com)

Philips has expanded its SG300 and SG60 slide scanner line with the new Pathology Scanner SGi, offering configurable native DICOM JPEG and — notably — native DICOM JPEG XL output, the first such device in the world. By producing DICOM-compliant images at the scanner level, Philips replaces the fragmented proprietary file workflows that have dominated digital pathology and enables direct ingestion into standard PACS/archives and downstream tools. The technical significance is twofold: JPEG XL is a modern codec that Philips says yields up to 50% smaller DICOM files at equivalent image quality, cutting storage and bandwidth needs for labs handling rapidly growing whole-slide image volumes; and native DICOM output accelerates interoperability with AI/ML pipelines, centralized archiving, cross-modality diagnostics, and cloud or on-premise analytics. For the AI community this means more standardized, bandwidth-efficient datasets, easier model integration and deployment, and lower infrastructure costs — all of which can speed development and scaling of pathology AI applications.