Digital pathology solutions
The software products and integrated hardware products for quantitative microscopy offered by Visiopharm are highly applicable for a vast range of methods in pathology. These methods include:
| Species-dependent methods: | Regulatory level |
| Plant pathology (phytopathology) | No |
| Veterinary pathology (animal health, experimental models, toxicology) | No to High |
| Human pathology (screening, clinical pathology, clinical research) | Low to Very High |
| Specimen-dependent methods: | Spatial information |
| Cytology (isolated cells: cytospins, smears or cultures from body fluids) | No to Low |
| Fine-needle aspirates | Low to High |
| Histology (tissue sections: fixed, paraffin-embedded or frozen tissue biopsies) | High |
| Staining-dependent methods: | Specificity |
| Routine stain (nucleus and cytoplasm by Hematoxylin and Eosin) | No to Low |
| Special stains (cell components by chemical reactions with dyes) | Medium to High |
| Immunochemistry (antigens by chromogenic or fluorogenic IHC and ICC) | Medium to Very High |
| In situ hybridization (DNA and RNA by FISH, CISH, SISH etc) | High to Very High |
| Imaging-dependent methods: | Automation |
| Manual microscopy and digital image acquisition | No to Low |
| Microscopy with motorized stage and digital image sampling | Medium |
| Microscopy with slide loader and digital image sampling | High |
| Whole slide scanning | High to Very High |
The quantitative analysis can be based on protocols designed by the Visiopharm software-user alone, or with on-line assistance from a Visiopharm expert. The analysis may rely on color information only, but more frequently uses a combination of color and spatial information in the digital image. The customer-designed protocols may be supplemented by ready-to-use protocols supplied by Visiopharm e.g., for nuclear or membrane-associated biomarkers . All protocols are stored, thereby ensuring consistent scoring principles throughout study periods, and allowing operators with various background and experience to execute the protocols and generate reliable data. The scoring results achieved by the software protocols can easily be reviewed together with the corresponding digital images by the pathologist.
The Visiopharm protocols are for research and education use, including clinical research, but not for diagnostic procedures.
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