[1716] Use of Whole Slide Imaging for Tissue Microarrays: The Cooperative Prostate Cancer Tissue Resource Model

W Amin, IZ Yildiz Aktas, J Duboy, T Harper, H Singh, JT Milnes, R Deaton, V Macias, A Kajdacsy-Balla, MJ Becich, AV Parwani. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA; University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, PA; University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL

Background: The NCI Cooperative Prostate Cancer Tissue Resource (CPCTR) is a virtual tissue bank comprised of four academic centers with archived thousands of clinically annotated prostate cancer specimens and six well characterized paraffin embedded Tissue Microarrays (TMAs) to fulfill the needs of the oncology research community. In order to enhance value to these collections, the CPCTR TMAs have been imaged using virtual microscopy and whole slide imaging of the glass slides with a link to the annotated de-identified patient data.
Design: The Whole Slide Imaging (WSI) Facility at our institution runs several high-throughput imagers (Aperio, Zeiss, Hamamatsu). A full time imaging technician is employed for monitoring and maintenance of the system and image QA. The CPCTR WSI project is accomplished in three major steps: 1) Collection of all glass slides used for TMA construction from the collaborating CPCTR sites. The H&E slides pen-marking of tumor areas where the cores were extracted from and sent for image capture along with slides; 2) Scanning the whole donor slides at 20 X and the TMA slide at 40 X magnification with Aperio ScanScopes at both institutions followed by downloading of images into an image server; and 3) Building internet links between each tissue core in a TMA map, the corresponding whole slide image and TMA core image.
Results: After automated image capture, the imaging technician visually examined whole slide images for image quality and a pathologist reviewed of the images. The scanned images were then linked to the TMA maps. It provides high-quality and well annotated images to the researchers. Additionally, this can allow the CPCTR imaging project to function effectively across academic institutions and represent a virtual bank with images. In total 18 slides of 5 TMAs have been scanned.
Conclusions: Significant advancement in WSI technology allows to routinely image large numbers of slides automatically, rapidly and at high resolution. The CPCTR TMA imaging provides a digital image bank functions effectively across the academic institutions and represents a virtual bank with clinical annotation to facilitate translational research.
Category: Techniques

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 1:00 PM

Poster Session VI # 213, Wednesday Afternoon