Ultrasonic microtome blade for improved histological section quality to enable lean, automated and new tissue tests for increased sample intensity to support stratified medicine diagnoses - ULTRATOME

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Next generation histology to support stratified medicine diagnoses will need to increase the volume of samples processed, in order to perform screening exercises and to provide more intensive sampling for precise diagnoses. Laboratory automation is one key to this, but the art of reliably cutting the microscopically thin sections to view tissue samples under the microscope is the chief remaining barrier to this. Wear on cutting blades, sample damage, thickness problems, and the difficulty of handling the thin section, all require highly skilled operators. We plan to develop a novel ultrasonic cutting blade that will be capable of sectioning difficult materials easily, with controlled thickness, high precision and reduced blade wear, to support the drive to automation and a potential doubling of output to support highly intensive healtcare screening..We have brought together a multidisciplinary consortium of medical supply chain SMEs, supported by leading advanced materials researchers and a university medical school laboratory to represent the user community, to develop and validate the new technology and to bring it to market.