2023/08/14 | 06:27:03

Pathology News

New Digital Pathology Method for Rapid Evaluation of Fresh Human Brain Specimens Could Speed Up Intraoperative Tumor Assessment

by Christos Evangelou, MSc, PhD – Medical Writer and Editor

 

Frozen biopsy specimens are commonly used for intraoperative tumor assessment and are important for rapid diagnostic evaluations in patients with brain tumors. However, preparation of frozen biopsy specimens often presents technical challenges, requires specialized infrastructure, and is labor-intensive and susceptible to freezing artifacts.

In a recent study, a group of researchers led by Prof. Chi-Kuang Sun of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Graduate Institute of Photonics and Optoelectronics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, developed a new digital pathology method for rapid preparation of fresh brain sections without the need for sectioning frozen biopsy specimens.¹ Their method entails the use of a platform that generates high-resolution images using third harmonic generation and two-photon excitation fluorescence signals from hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained specimens.

This digital pathology method enables high-resolution 2D scanning of optically sectioned fresh brain specimens and is four times faster than conventional preparation of frozen sections.¹ In addition, this method does not require training, unlike most digital pathology solutions.

“We aimed at developing an alternative approach to staining and imaging brain tumor samples, which is much faster than the current process of frozen biopsy. To be faster than a typical frozen biopsy, our approach optically sections the specimen instead of cryosectioning frozen specimens,” said Bhaskar Jyoti Borah, PhD, the first author of the study.

“We believe that utilization of traditional H&E dyes for staining the fresh specimens in our study is indeed one of the most important aspects to consider. Although H&E staining is a slow process, our method was four times faster than a typical frozen biopsy,” Dr. Borah said.

He believes that this digital pathology method may allow for rapid, accurate, and highly interpretable evaluation of fresh human samples without the need for labor-intensive sectioning of frozen specimens or additional training of pathologists.

 

The report was published in the journal Communications Medicine.

 

References

1. Borah BJ, Tseng Y-C, Wang K-C, et al. Rapid digital pathology of H&E-stained fresh human brain specimens as an alternative to frozen biopsy. Commun Med. 2023;3(1):77. doi:10.1038/s43856-023-00305-w

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