Not all stains are made equal: impact of stain normalization on prostate cancer diagnosis.

Objective: Stain normalization is a technique used to standardize the color appearance of digital whole slide images (WSIs). This study aimed to assess the impact of digital stain normalization on prostate cancer diagnosis by pathologists.

Methods: A multi-institutional board of four pathologists evaluated 407 hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) prostate WSIs before and after stain normalization.