Bringing Tissue into Perspective - Virtual Microscopy, Tissue Microarrays and Digital Image Analysis (Thursday am)

Facilitator: Dr Dan Catchpoole, Head, Tumour Bank, The Children's Hospital at Westmead, (www.chw.edu.au/tumourbank). danielc@chw.edu.au
Mr Ryan Kearn, Aperio Australia (Brisbane, Qld) (www.aperio.com)
Speaker: Mr Trevor Johnson, Aperio US (San Diego, CA) - WebEx

Virtual microscopy is the digital equivalent of traditional microscopy and enables the scanning of entire microscope slides and creation of a seamless digital image that can be stored in a database. This technology improves the accuracy, repeatability and productivity of pathologist assessments. Images can be viewed using ImageScope® software (free versions can be downloaded) which allows histopathologists anywhere to view virtual slides on a monitor as efficiently as you would a glass slide under a microscope with 20x, 40x and 83x (oil) diagnostic resolution. You can pan and zoom to any region of virtual slide, creating an efficient method to distribute an image library globally. Digital pathology reduces expenses associated with long-term sample storage and double handling. The extremely high resolution digital images (0.25μm² pixels) allow high-end image analysis, opening up new opportunities for quantitative immunohistochemistry, pattern recognition for specific tissue elements and greater insight into tissue architecture relationships. Slides can be analysed using innovative grid-computing algorithms and tissue microarray images can be scored and linked to sample data. High-throughput analysis of immunohistochemistry stained tissue microarrays will lead to rapid assessment of protein expression in tissue specimens, bringing histopathology into a new age. This workshop will include hands-on demonstrations of the Aperio Scanscope virtual microscopy technology, image capture, storage, online access and its virtual capacity and will address the analysis of tissue microarrays with TMALab® software. Specialist programs which quantify nuclear and membrane immunohistochemistry staining will be demonstrated with hands-on practicals. The latest pattern recognition applications and automated screening tools will be discussed. Workshop registrants can have a limited number of their tissue slides scanned before the conference and access these images as part of the demonstration. Please contact Dr Catchpoole once you have registered. Numbers are limited to a first-in first-served basis.