McKay Richard R, Baxi Vipul A, Montalto Michael C
Omnyx LLC Research, 800 Centennial Avenue, Bldg 4, 2 Floor, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA.
J Pathol Inform. 2011;2:38. doi: 10.4103/2153-3539.84231. Epub 2011 Aug 24.
Whole slide imaging (WSI) for digital pathology involves the rapid automated acquisition of multiple high-power fields from a microscope slide containing a tissue specimen. Capturing each field in the correct focal plane is essential to create high-quality digital images. Others have described a novel focusing method which reduces the number of focal planes required to generate accurate focus. However, this method was not applied dynamically in an automated WSI system under continuous motion.
This report measures the accuracy of this method when applied in a rapid continuous scan mode using a dual sensor WSI system with interleaved acquisition of images.
We acquired over 400 tiles in a "stop and go" scan mode, surveying the entire z depth in each tile and used this as ground truth. We compared this ground truth focal height to the focal height determined using a rapid 3-point focus algorithm applied dynamically in a continuous scanning mode.
Our data showed the average focal height error of 0.30 (±0.27) μm compared to ground truth, which is well within the system's depth of field. On a tile by tile assessment, approximately 95% of the tiles were within the system's depth of field. Further, this method was six times faster than acquiring tiles compared to the same method in a non-continuous scan mode.
The data indicates that the method employed can yield a significant improvement in scan speed while maintaining highly accurate autofocusing.
用于数字病理学的全玻片成像（WSI）涉及从包含组织标本的显微镜载玻片快速自动采集多个高倍视野。在正确的焦平面捕获每个视野对于创建高质量数字图像至关重要。其他人描述了一种新颖的聚焦方法，该方法减少了生成准确聚焦所需的焦平面数量。然而，该方法未在连续运动的自动WSI系统中动态应用。
本报告测量了在使用具有交错图像采集功能的双传感器WSI系统以快速连续扫描模式应用此方法时的准确性。
我们以“走走停停”扫描模式采集了400多个切片，测量每个切片的整个z深度，并将此作为基准真值。我们将此基准真值焦高与在连续扫描模式下动态应用的快速三点聚焦算法确定的焦高进行比较。
我们的数据显示，与基准真值相比，平均焦高误差为0.30（±0.27）μm，这完全在系统的景深范围内。在逐个切片评估中，约95%的切片在系统景深范围内。此外，与非连续扫描模式下的相同方法相比，该方法采集切片的速度快六倍。
数据表明，所采用的方法在保持高度精确自动聚焦的同时，可显著提高扫描速度。
