Digital Pathology Blog

OLYMPUS TO LAUNCH FASTER DIGITAL CAMERA FOR MICROSCOPES

07/02/2008 23:38:41

TOKYO, Jul 03, 2008 (AsiaPulse via COMTEX News Network) -- Olympus Corp. (TSE:7733) said Wednesday that it will release this coming Monday a new digital camera that connects to microscopes used at medical sites and for inspections at factories.

The DP72 attaches to the top of the microscope. It has an effective pixel count of 1.45 megapixels and can capture nine frames of images in a single 3 x 3 image array equivalent to 12.8 megapixels. Image capture time has been shortened to 2.5 seconds from three seconds, making work more efficient.

The new camera also has enhanced color reproduction, enabling the display of colors closer to reality. It is expected to help researchers obtain more accurate information in pathology diagnoses.

The DP72 will have a standard price of 1.61 million yen (US$15,212). Olympus is targeting domestic sales of 1,000 units a year.

Olympus OnSite Truck

I had an opportunity yesterday to take a tour and view the Nanozoomer at a recent health fair at my insitution on the Olympus Onsite delivery system.  I might be the last person in this space to see this but it is worth checking out when it comes to a site near you!  A link to a video tour is available here as well as details.  This is a traveling booth on a 18 wheeler that showcases Olympus's microscopes, surgical products and diagnostic systems as well as areas for financial and healthcare services and consumer camera and recorder products.  Olympus is brought directly to you!

Here is a previous press release from Olympus with more specifics.

My personal thanks to the sales and marketing vendor associates for the personalized tour and demonstration.

Megapixel myth

A site created by a photographer, Ken Rockwell at www.kenrockwell.com addresses a variety of issues dealing with digital and film photography, image processing and helpful tips.  Among them are buying guides, technical support and well done photo demonstrations of white balance, sharpening and instrument recommendations. 

Included is a page dealing with the "megapixel myth" which comes up for static and telepathology pathology images when trying to answer the questions "How much resolution is enough?"  "Are the images big enough?"  "What size camera should I buy?" And so forth. 

One issue I come back to frequently is that resolution and little to do with image quality.  Other factors including subject matter, field selection, stain quality, how the image will be viewed, what is/are the questions being asked or what illustrations are provided for are much more important. 

Realize that video telepathology may be sufficient for most cases with a resolution of less than 640x480.  Static telepathology is accomplished with images of that size without compromising the diagnostic features or the quality of the image if the appropriate fields and magnifications are selected.  Robotic systems allow for the same or slightly more with minimal gain in my experience. 

The monitor resolution or DPI obviously is critical.  With that said, I have seen little lost other than desktop space with bulky CRT monitors without flat panel higher resolution screens for diagnostic work. 

This breast cancer image was captured with a 3 MP camera (640x480), originally saved as a TIFF, compressed to a JPEG and further compressed for this posting at a size of less than 300K.  It represents a diagnostic field.  I have used "better" cameras with inferior image quality. 

This time stamped photo of malaria taken from a thin blood film using an oil immersion lens was taken using a 3 MP camera through the ocular of a BH-2 microscope.  You can make out the organisms and speciate accordingly.  Not bad considering the "technology".

Some publishers still insist upon "high resolution" iamges, saved as TIFF for images accompanying manuscripts.  One I recently submitted a paper to required RBG and CMYK formats before deciding if and what would be published in the mode of their choice.  Absurd given the image size, paper and print quality.  It speaks to resolution (linear resolution) in terms of image resolution, print resolution and the issue of screen resolution I touched on above.  There is little difference between 3 and 6 MP.  The difference is nil between 6 and 8 MP.  One needs about a doubling of resolution or film size to make an obvious improvement.  This is the same as quadrupling of megapixels. 

For a print in a journal at column width printed at 300 DPI, the degree of resolution is not as significant as focus, tone, white balance, contrast, sharpness, etc...

The image on the far left was taken with a 6 MP camera, the one on the near left taken minutes later with an 8 MP camera.  Can you tell the difference (other than slight differences during sunrise)? 

The same is true of histology images.  Each of these was taken at 20x with a 2MP camera and compressed so that each one is 1/2 the size of the other from left to right in this pane. 

All are from the same field of a Warthins tumor.  Not only can you make the diagnosis in the most compressed image, there is no difference between the 3 that would or should dissuade one from making the same diagnosis.

I fully realize there are issues with the blog software but the point is the difference is nil regardless.

With that said, I am looking at personal cameras beyond 8 MP now and into double digits (a complete overkill for 5x7 prints, even 8x10 or larger posters).  Part of it is to try to get closer to "film" quality which requires resolution beyond most commercially available cameras. 

For more on this topic, check out Ken Rockwell's discussion on the topic

Virtual Microscope at University of Delaware

Interesting site at http://www.udel.edu/biology/ketcham/microscope/scope.html.

On the first day of biology lab, students begin working with microscopes, but, "You know they're probably not going to see anything," says Bob Ketcham, Laboratory Coordinator, Department of Biological Sciences.

Ketcham thought: What does it take to help someone be successful with the microscope? Could technology help?

Ketcham began working with PRESENT staff in the fall of 2002 on one aspect of a course redesign grant for BISC 104, an introduction for non-majors. The goal was to develop a simulation that would allow students to learn in the same way they do on a real microscope and improve their actual lab experience.

Skilled microscope use is essential for the 300-400 non-majors each semester. Ketcham often saw students struggling to see specimens and becoming disinterested as their frustration grew. Sometimes, they even pretended to be successful. Students must be quite comfortable with a microscope to get the most out of lab and learn basic biological concepts.

The challenge is to provide individual instruction, says Ketcham. "Students understand the lecture if they work on the microscope to see cells." However, lab instructors cannot spend a lot of time with every student needing help. Moreover, it is not possible for an instructor to share the view through the microscope while demonstrating proper use.

Today, students are first directed to a web site to use a virtual microscope. They begin with a narrated tutorial of the lab replica and are shown a checklist displaying every setup step. As a student begins using the microscope, the checklist promotes success by indicating when a step is completed or needs to be repeated.

Students see the outside of the microscope and can also look through the microscope at a specimen. These views can be switched at any time, but a student will not see a specimen unless the proper steps are followed. Students view images of actual specimens and can adjust all microscope controls including the light switch, rheostat, magnification, stage position, oculars, course and fine focus, and iris diaphragm.

Initially, Ketcham and PRESENT staff hoped to find an existing virtual microscope or similar demonstration to meet their needs. Very few simulations were available and those had limited instructional value. "The videos would demonstrate something on a microscope that didn't apply to us," says Ketcham.

Becky Kinney provided the Macromedia Flash programming expertise to create a simulation from scratch. Over several months, Ketcham and Kinney outlined microscope use, defined requirements for the virtual model, discussed technical challenges, made diagrams and storyboards, wrote the narration, selected technology, and tested prototypes. The tool was released in the spring of 2003.

Since its launch, Ketcham reports success. Students are having fewer troubles with the lab microscopes and the lab received a very high rating in an end-of-semester survey. "We're not getting stuck at the level of using the microscope, and can discuss, for example, the properties of bacteria and how they relate."

The microscope simulation is beginning to get national exposure. In the spring of 2003, Ketcham shared the web site through a posting on a Biolab listserv for college and high school-level instructors, and that fall, it appeared in the online version of Cell Biology Education . The project is also included in the MERLOT educational resource directory.

"What we know about cells is extraordinary," says Ketcham. With the success of the virtual microscope, students will be able to comprehend and appreciate more of these discoveries.

New microscope can color-code atoms

ITHACA, N.Y., Feb. 25 (UPI) -- A new electron microscope at Cornell University is enabling scientists for the first time to form color-coded images of individual atoms.

"The current generation of electron microscopes can be thought of as expensive black-and-white cameras where different atoms appear as different shades of gray," said Cornell Associate Professor David Muller. "This microscope takes color pictures -- where each colored atom represents a uniquely identified chemical species."

The instrument is a new type of scanning transmission electron microscope built by the Nion Co. of Kirkland, Wash., under an instrument-development award to Cornell from the National Science Foundation. Professor John Silcox and Ondrej Krivanek of Nion are the project's co-principal investigators.

The microscope incorporates new aberration-correction technology that focuses a beam of electrons on a spot smaller than a single atom and does it more sharply and with greater intensity than previously possible. That, the scientists said, allows information previously hidden in the background to be seen. It also provides up to a hundredfold increase in imaging speed.

The capabilities of the new instrument are described in the journal Science.

Published: Feb. 25, 2008 at 3:07 PM

Multimodal Tumor Diagnostics: Delivering A More Precise Image

Employing highly innovative optical and biomolecular technologies, a German research network consisting of leading scientific and industrial groups aims to establish new dimensions in tumor diagnostics. The objective of this research endeavor is to enable superior characterization of tumors.

Current diagnosis of solid tumors is still based on the microscopic examination of tissues by highly specialized pathologists. Even though genetic analysis and immunohistochemical methods were established as additional diagnostic procedures in recent years, light microscopy-based visual tissue examination is still considered as the unchallenged gold standard in routine diagnostics. With further maturing of innovative technologies, such as digital microscopy, automated image analysis, Raman spectroscopy, and optical measurements of cell elasticity, promising, new methods are opening up for tumor diagnostics.

"Each of these innovative technologies alone has substantial potential to improve tumor diagnosis," says Professor Axel Niendorf, initiator of the research project. "Improving any of these optical and biomolecular technologies in isolation would not meet our ambition though. We will instead investigate them by an integrated diagnostic approach," the pathologist from Hamburg explains. This idea eventually evolved into the "Exprimage" research network, which consists of Definiens (Munich), Qiagen (Hilden), Carl Zeiss Microimaging (Jena), WITec (Ulm), the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, and the University of Leipzig.

In the course of this three-year research project, more than 80,000 tissue sections will be analyzed with various different technologies, and the results merged to produce a novel, integrated image. Such a multimodal image of a tumor is expected to provide medical doctors with a much sharper characterization of the disease than presently possible. This could enable further progress in the development of individualized cancer therapies and allow for improved prognosis of how cancer diseases may progress. The focus of the research project is on tumors from various organs, primarily from breast, lung, colon, and prostate.

"'Exprimage' is a broadly scaled research project, bundling the expertise of leading companies and scientists in a truly unique way," says the coordinator of the network, Ralph Humberg from Definiens. "Exprimage" is funded by the German Ministry of Research and Education with a grant of around 5 million euros. The industrial partners will additionally invest nearly the same amount.

Microscopic imaging technique is developed

Upton, NY, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- U.S. government scientists have developed a microscopic imaging technique that might lead to improved diagnosis and treatment of a variety of diseases.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have filed a provisional patent application for the new method of correlating the results of microscopic imaging techniques.

The scientists said their invention is essentially a micron-scale metallic marking grid upon which researchers place their samples -- biological tissues or inorganic samples such as minerals -- prior to imaging with different methods.

Lisa Miller, leader of the research team noted many diseases, such as Alzheimer's, are characterized by changes in both organic materials, such as proteins, as well as changes in the composition or concentration of inorganic trace metals.

Scientists have techniques for studying each kind of sample independently. But, she said, without being able to correlate the findings, important information about the relationship between the organic and inorganic components can be missed.

In addition to helping scientists study disease processes, the method could be applied in monitoring and cleaning up environmental contamination, which is also characterized by the interplay of organic and inorganic factors.

More information on the study can be found at: http://www.nsls.bnl.gov/newsroom/science/2007/09-Miller.htm