NEEHA: Neuromorphic Event Enhanced Histopathology Apparatus

Histopathological diagnosis is the gold standard for disease and cancer management, yet whole-slide digitization remains prohibitively expensive and data-intensive, limiting equitable access to care. Conventional Whole Slide Imaging (WSI) systems are constrained by a fundamental trade-off between throughput and cost due to motion blur, relying on expensive time-delay integration sensors or slow stop-and-stare acquisition. These constraints are compounded by a bandwidth crisis, in which the digitization of empty background and near-constant regions generates massive data that hinder efficient storage, transmission, and downstream inference. Therefore, we introduce the Neuromorphic Event Enhanced Histopathology Apparatus (NEEHA), a continuous-flow WSI system based on asynchronous event sensing. By abandoning frame-based acquisition, NEEHA exploits continuous stage motion to capture spatial intensity gradients, enabling motion-blur-free imaging at speeds beyond the limits of conventional cameras. We demonstrate that clinically relevant nuclear segmentation can be performed directly on sparse event streams, achieving accuracy comparable to inter-observer agreement of human pathologists. To ensure clinical interpretability for human review, we incorporate a physics-constrained optimization framework that recovers high-fidelity intensity images. Furthermore, a tilted optical design enables single-pass volumetric acquisition without mechanical z-stacking. By aligning sensing physics with the intrinsic sparsity of tissue morphology, NEEHA reduces system costs by 50% relative to portable WSI scanners and delivers theoretical sub-minute 40x scans, matching the speed of high-throughput industrial systems. In doing so, NEEHA offers a scalable and data-efficient pathway toward global pathology equity.