Carl Zeiss Microimaging Gmbh

Interscope Technologies, Inc.

Clarient Gmbh

Trestle Acquisition Corp.

Trestle Corporation

Christopher R Hauser

Jeffrey Beckstead

John R Gilbertson, Ii

Patricia A Feineigle

Arthur W Wetzel

Frank Anthony Palmieri, Jr

An imaging apparatus. The imaging apparatus may find an area in which a specimen is present, then focus on the specimen and capture images of the specimen during continuous stage motion.

System for creating microscopic digital montage images

A system for determining tissue locations on a slide.

System and method for finding regions of interest for microscopic digital montage imaging

Imaging apparatuses and methods that capture a low-resolution image of a slide, identify a region of interest, and capture a high-resolution image of the region of interest.

An imaging apparatus is disclosed. The imaging apparatus includes a motorized stage, a camera focussed relative to the stage, and a processor coupled to the camera. The processor contains instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to capture an image incident on the camera, convert the image into a plurality of pixels having a characteristic such as intensity, establish the characteristic for each pixel; and determine which pixels contain a target image based on the characteristic of the pixels. Another imaging apparatus includes a motorized stage, a camera having a lens directed toward the motorized stage, and a processor coupled to the camera. The processor contains instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to select at least three regions of a sample adjacent the motorized stage, develop a focus surface based on a normalized distribution of the at least three selected regions, position the camera on a region of the sample, focus the camera on the surface, and capture an image of the region. In addition, an imaging apparatus having a motorized stage, a camera focussed relative to the motorized stage, a stage position sensor adjacent the motorized stage, and a pulsed light directed toward the motorized stage and coupled to the stage position sensor such that the pulsed light illuminates in response to the stage position sensor is disclosed.

A system for processing a thumbnail image from a microscope slide to determine tissue locations on the slide. The system comprises an image cropping component, a tissue finding component, and a scan control component. The image cropping component crops the thumbnail image and removes portions of the image that fall outside of determined slide boundaries. The cropped image from the image cropping component is inputted into the tissue finding component. The tissue finding component identifies tissue regions by applying a sequence of filters that incorporate knowledge of typical appearance and location of tissue and non-tissue slide regions. The tissue finding component outputs a tiling matrix whose values indicate which tiles should be imaged. The scan control component interprets the tiling matrix and transposes positions of the tiling matrix into actual stage coordinate for a microscopic imaging.

Today's technology allows montage images of large areas to be captured, stored and displayed at the resolution limit of the microscope optics. The invention reduces the overall time to capture a microscope slide by reducing the overhead associated with refocusing the optics at each tile location. Using a macroscopic image of the region to be scanned, representative focus positions are selected based on a predefined set of image characteristics. Prior to montage scanning, these focus positions are placed under the microscope optics and a best-focus position determined. A surface is fit to the resulting three-dimensional data. The parameters that define this surface are feed into the scanning control component to allow high-quality focused images to be acquired throughout the scanning process, eliminating the required stop, refocus, acquire image processing steps used in traditional montage imaging systems.

Method for maintaining high-quality focus during high-throughput, microscopic digital montage imaging

An illumination system for microscopic digital montage imaging based on a pulsed light illumination source triggered by the position of a specimen with respect to the optical axis of the microscope. The strobe illumination is used to facilitate high-speed tiled (montage) image capture of otherwise static specimens with higher throughput and significantly reduced mechanical precision requirements and cost. The invention allows for perfectly aligned montage tiles at high throughputs using standard microscope optics, having camera frame rate be the limiting factor in microscopic tiled image capture.

Growing community of inventors

Pittsburgh, PA, United States of America

Christopher R Hauser