Delee Corp., Mountain View, CA, 94041, USA.
Departamento de Bioquímica y Medicina Molecular, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Monterrey, 64460, Mexico.
Sci Rep. 2019 Sep 24;9(1):13766. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-50241-w.
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have the potential of becoming the gold standard marker for cancer diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring. However, current methods for its isolation and characterization suffer from equipment variability and human operator error that hinder its widespread use. Here we report the design and construction of a fully automated high-throughput fluorescence microscope that enables the imaging and classification of cancer cells that were labeled by immunostaining procedures. An excellent agreement between our machine vision-based approach and a state-of-the-art microscopy equipment was achieved. Our integral approach provides a path for operator-free and robust analysis of cancer cells as a standard clinical practice.
循环肿瘤细胞（CTCs）有可能成为癌症诊断、预后和监测的金标准标志物。然而，目前用于其分离和鉴定的方法存在设备可变性和人为操作误差，这阻碍了其广泛应用。在这里，我们报告了一种全自动高通量荧光显微镜的设计和构建，该显微镜能够对通过免疫染色程序标记的癌细胞进行成像和分类。我们基于机器视觉的方法与最先进的显微镜设备之间达到了极好的一致性。我们的整体方法为实现无操作人员且稳健的癌症细胞分析提供了一条途径，可作为标准临床实践。
