Acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) is a distinct subclass of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) which is characterized by a reciprocal and balanced translocation between the promyelocytic leukemia protein (PML) gene on chromosome 15 and the retinoic acid receptor α (RARα) gene on chromosome 17 [
1,
2]. The t(15;17) results in an oncogenic fusion protein PML-RARα which functions as a transcriptional repressor of RARα target genes and impairs the homeostatic function of PML thereby promoting a proliferation of myeloid progenitor cells and provoking a maturation arrest at the promyelocytic stage [
3‐
5]. APL was first described by the Norwegian hematologist Leif Hillestad in 1957 [
6] and for a long time it was considered one of the most lethal leukemias [
7] with population-based incidence rates varying between different ethnicities [
8‐
10]. The introduction of all-
trans retinoic acid (ATRA) [
11] and arsenic trioxide (ATO) [
12] has revolutionized APL therapy and outcome nowadays showing remarkable cure rates [
13,
14]. Nevertheless, APL is considered a hematologic emergency and requires immediate treatment upon suspected diagnosis, both causally and supportive, due to possible early death from bleeding [
13]. Early death rates in APL – commonly defined as death within 30 days of presentation [
15] – appear to be underestimated in the medical literature: While clinical trials frequently show early death rates below 10% it has to be considered that a substantial number of patients even dies before APL is diagnosed and patients with significant comorbidities or higher age are often excluded from trials leading to bias [
15,
16]. In patients ineligible for clinical trials, registry data as well as population-based analyses show an early death rate of approximately 20% with even higher rates for elderly patients [
15‐
19]. When diagnosed and treated promptly, APL is curable in the majority of patients. Therefore, fast and accurate diagnosis as well as immediate treatment upon suspicion is crucial [
13]. Classical APL can be recognized by a distinct morphology of abnormal promyelocytes with a heavy granulation pattern and characteristic cells containing single Auer rods or bundles of Auer rods in the cytoplasm (‘faggot cells’) [
20]. Therefore, cytomorphologic assessment by experienced hemtopathologists is essential for APL diagnosis since it is fast, feasible and can often reinforce clinically suspected diagnosis. Still, diagnosis of APL routinely encompasses cytomorphology [
21,
22] as well as cytogenetics for confirmation of suspected diagnosis [
13], however genetic analyses take more time and resources until results are available. Further, high-quality genetic testing might not be ubiquitously available.
Machine Learning (ML), especially Artificial Neural Nets (ANN), can handle large-scale data sets and are implemented as image recognition and computer vision technologies, especially Convolutional Neural Nets (CNN) [
23,
24] as a form of Deep Learning (DL). DL models consist of massive parallel computing systems consisting of large numbers of interconnected processing units called artificial neurons, [
25,
26] which can be run efficiently on high performance computing systems. CNNs contain multiple neural layers to provide functionality for image recognition [
24] Thus, these capabilities can be utilized for cell segmentation, cell recognition and disease classification in hematological malignancies [
27‐
29]. We here present a CNN-based scalable approach that can detect APL among healthy bone marrow donor and non-APL AML samples from bone marrow smear (BMS) images. The resulting models provide a reliable method for APL diagnosis when genetic data are still pending or an experienced hematopathologist is not immediately available, thereby reducing treatment delay. Further, our DL model can be implemented remotely in areas where no immediate access to high-quality genetic testing is available, thereby enabling the diagnosis of APL in non-industrialized countries, where APL is often more common [
8,
9].