Automatic slide scanning microscope for brightfield and fluorescence microscopy

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Proteins and their distribution in stem cells can best be determined with fluorescence microscopy. With this semi-automatic microscopy system it will be possible to produce high-quality immunofluorescence images of stem cells and bone marrow sections in a "mid-throughput" procedure. The system also allows the recording of anatomical sections in the "mid-throughput" procedure. Screening for the distribution of a large number of new proteins in stem cells can also be carried out using such a mid-throughput methods. With such a new system also novel, beyond the state-of-the-art investigations on co-distributions of different proteins and new screens to analyze complex and multiple co-localizations of proteins in rare stem cells are possible due to the fully automatic operation of the device. Furthermore, simply a reduction in the time necessary to spend in front of a microscope is also an important feature with respect to simple workplace ergonomics for all lab members. Fixed cells are scanned with the system as whole slides and with multichannel fluorescence Z-stacks with a scanning pixel resolution. All channels are recorded with a real gray scale resolution. The images are fully automatic and reproducible according to previously developed scan profiles. The scan data is transferred directly to workgroup storage (NAS). The evaluation of the scan data takes place both automatically and interactively on two workstations via fully automatic analyses by means of a custom-adjusted/developed software termed "Cell-Categorizer".