Digital imaging of tissue slides is part of the future of anatomic pathology. However, as currently implemented, while facilitating logistics and enabling advanced analytical tools, it still requires the preparation of glass slides prior to scanning. An alternative strategy that bypasses conventional histological processing and its associated delays and expense would be useful, and a number of technologies for rapid, ex-vivo, slide-free microscopy are in research-and-development phase and a few have already been deployed as research-use-only commercial instruments. These contenders to replace FFPE-based histology appear promising for such uses as real-time surgical guidance, margin assessment, rapid on-site evaluation (ROSE), and potentially even for final tissue diagnosis, while accelerating care and decreasing costs.
Prof. Levenson’s presentation entitled: “MUSE for Slide-Free, Real-Time Histology – It’s Cooler than Frozens.” will focus on MUSE and also look at a few of these methods, including multiphoton and confocal microscopy, light-sheet microscopy, optical coherence tomography and structured illumination.