New methods to improve throughput, objectivity and accuracy will revolutionise high throughput tissue scanning.

TTP LabTech's Acumen ^eX3 can ease the bottleneck for scanning tissue sections mounted on microscope slides. The Acumen ^eX3 is undeniably suited for tissue analysis due to its large field of view (400mm²), which enables the rapid collection of multi-coloured fluorescence data from whole sections of tissue at a time.

The example image (right) shows a tissue scan of a whole section of rat duodenum labelled with a non-specific lipid stain, obtained using the Acumen.

• Cytometry mode rapidly scans, analyses and reports high content information from tissue sections yielding very small post-scan file sizes (> 50kB). 
• For more detailed evaluations, TIFF files may be exported and analysed in batch mode using third-party image processing software. 
• Finally, cytometry mode may be used to rapidly determine regions of interest within larger sections for visual scoring using Locator. 

Eli Lilly and Company has been comparing the use of cytometric versus image analysis of exported TIFF files (using third party software) for the determination of mitotic index in tumour sections. At SBS 2007, they reported some initial findings which showed that cytometric analysis by Explorer software generated comparable EC₅₀ values to those gained by image analysis of un-thresholded TIFF images. 

The unique optics of the Acumen ^eX3 open the door for true high throughput analysis of tissue sections. We anticipate many other biological applications will follow, now that the tools are commercially available.