HISTOPATHOLOGY 4x magnification 10x magnification Resolution
effect on the scannability of downstream instrumentation (Table 1). The 1,000 microscope slides consisted of 200 slides of each tab colour: white, blue, pink, green, yellow.
Thermal transfer printing
300dpi
SlideMate Laser technology uses specialty slides to produce 600dpi indelible printing directly on the slide tab.
Staining
Infrared laser
printing >600dpi
After slides were printed on SlideMate Laser, they were stained using the Gemini AS automated slide stainer (manufactured by Shandon Diagnostics, Epredia) with the protocol outlined in Table 2. Upon completion of staining, slides were dried in a fume hood, and transferred to slide baskets.
Digital slide scanning
Table 1. Magnified images of the letter M directly printed on a slide tab with two different technologies, thermal transfer and infrared laser printing. Differences in the resolution can be seen at 4x and 10x magnification.
print information directly on the slide while other options, such as printing information on a slide label and applying the slide label to the slide, are available for laboratories.
Slide printing
A total of 1,000 SlideMate Laser PLUS microscope slides (manufactured by New Erie Scientific, Epredia) were printed with 2D, data matrix barcodes and identifying text directly onto the slide using the SlideMate Laser slide printer (manufactured by Fa-Tech Diagnostics, SRL, subsidiary of PHC Group). Each
barcode contained information such as sample identifier, stain name, block identifier and year. Slides were grouped by case number with 10 slides printed per case and each slide within the group containing a different stain so each slide contained a unique barcode to identify it. SlideMate Laser prints text and
barcodes at 600dpi (dots per inch) which can enable laboratories to include more identifying information for the sample on the slide tab. Other printer technologies such as thermal transfer and inkjet print at resolutions of 300dpi or less. The resolution of the print may have an
Slide baskets, each containing 20 slides, were loaded into the E1000 Dx Digital Slide Scanner (Epredia) and the scanner was set-up to scan the slide tab to capture the relevant sample information in the barcode. A scan is classified as successful when the instrument scans the barcode and the information is populated in the scanner software. The barcode scanning technology used to obtain this data is VintaSoft Barcode .NET SDK. If the scanner is unable to accurately scan the slide tab to identify the sample information, the software will leave the first column empty and add a date stamp (DS) to the slide placeholder in the software.
Images of all slide tabs were reviewed on the E1000 Dx scanning software in order to confirm the accuracy of the barcode scanning. The same test protocol was then
replicated on the Pannoramic 1000 DX Digital Slide Scanner (3DHISTECH).
Results For both barcode scannability tests, each microscope slide barcode was successfully scanned and the data was correctly placed into the software based on the information within the barcode. No slide tabs were unable to be read so as a result, no date stamp results were seen.
While scannability may be affected by the colour of the slide tab for text printed directly onto the slide, no difference in scannability was seen on the five slide colours tested, white, blue, green, pink, or yellow.
As data was printed directly on the slide tab, issues such as stuck labels or destroyed slides were not seen in this study.2
SlideMate Laser (Epredia). 38
The Epredia E1000 Dx Digital Slide Scanner achieved a barcode scannability rate of 100% on the printed and stained
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