2012 © Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland FIMM
Tissue Microarray (TMA)
A tissue microarray (TMA) block is a block containing hundreds of punched cores 0.6 or 1.0 mm in diameter, usually from paraffin-embedded tissues. TMA technology allows:
(1) simultaneous analysis of a large number of clinical cases/samples
(2) standardized laboratory and evaluation conditions,
(3) prevention of significant damage to the donor patient’s tissue, and
(4) time, materials, technical assistance and money savings
The carefully selected tissue areas also facilitate fully automatized digital analysis at later steps.
At the moment we are able to:
- Design and prepare TMA blocks from paraffin embedded tissues collected by the customer
- Section TMA and other paraffin embedded tissue blocks
- Stain the sectioned slides histochemically and/or use immunohistochemical techniques (in co-operation with HUSLAB)
- Digitalize the stained slides (in co-operation with Johan Lundin at FIMM)
In the future (2011-2012) we aim to be able to also
- Explore HUSLAB´s patient records to find suitable cases for TMA blocks
- Collect original slides and blocks from HUSLAB´s archives
- Screen the slides and circulate the suitable punching areas
- Offer slides from ”inventory” TMA blocks (e.g., ”a block of 500 prostate cancer specimens”)
Slide Digitization, Virtual Microscopy, and Automated Image Analysis
Microscopy slides can be digitized with an automated whole-slide scanner and stored as virtual slides on the WebMicroscope platform. The virtual slides comprise high-resolution images covering the entire specimen on the slide. With the WebMicroscopy approach virtual slides can be assessed visually or with assistance of automated image analysis.
Currently we provide:
- Brightfield scanning of slides
- Virtual slide storage, viewing, scoring and management through the WebMicroscope platform
- Semi-automated de-arraying of tissue microarray (TMA) virtual slides into single core images
- High-throughput automated image analysis for immunohistochemistry (IHC) and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH)
- Database connection for scorings and linking to clinical data
- Online statistical analysis of results
In the future we aim to provide:
- Scanning of fluorescence slides
- Automated morphological classification of tissues by computer vision
