Ex Vivo Microscopy: A Promising Next-Generation Digital Microscopy Tool for Surgical Pathology Practice

Abstract

Context.— The rapid evolution of optical imaging modalities in recent years has opened the opportunity for ex vivo tissue imaging, which has significant implications for surgical pathology practice. These modalities have promising potential to be used as next-generation digital microscopy tools for examination of fresh tissue, with or without labeling with contrast agents. Objective.— To review the literature regarding various types of ex vivo optical imaging platforms that can generate digital images for tissue recognition with potential for utilization in anatomic pathology clinical practices. Data Sources.— Literature relevant to ex vivo tissue imaging obtained from the PubMed database. Conclusions.— Ex vivo imaging of tissues can be performed by using various types of optical imaging techniques. These next-generation digital microscopy tools have a promising potential for utilization in surgical pathology practice.

Comparison of Real-Time Fluorescence Confocal Digital Microscopy With Hematoxylin-Eosin–Stained Sections of Core-Needle Biopsy Specimens

“…Optical imaging modalities are emerging as the next generation of digital microscopy tools, with implications for pathology practice. 16,17 We chose the commercially available investigational prototype of an FCM platform for real-time bedside imaging of IR-guided CNBs. This FCM device has been extensively tested for evaluating skin specimens obtained from Mohs surgery for diagnosis and margin assessment of basal cell carcinoma.…”

Ex vivo confocal microscopy: revolution in fast pathology in dermatology

“…These include optical coherence tomography, full-field optical coherence tomography, structured illumination microscopy, light sheet microscopy, stimulated Raman spectroscopy, nonlinear microscopy, microscopy using ultraviolet surface excitation and photoacoustic microscopy. [73][74][75] The different modalities of ex vivo tissue imaging technologies vary considerably in their optical principles, and most of them have only been tested in a limited number of tissues without clinical validation. These techniques are compared in Table 8.…”

Multiscale 3-dimensional pathology findings of COVID-19 diseased lung using high-resolution cleared tissue microscopy

“…4 Three-dimensional histology can be obtained by exhaustive serial sectioning of a tissue block, followed by digital whole slide scanning of the sections and image reconstruction, but such methods are prohibitively expensive and time consuming. Emerging techniques using fluorescence contrast to simulate H&E staining, 5,6 optical tissue clearing, 4,[7][8][9] and high throughput optical sectioning microscopes, 4,5,[7][8][9][10][11] have enabled acquisition of 3-dimensional pseudo-histological imaging of a wide range of tissues. In this work, we report the first 3-dimensional microscopy images from optically-cleared lung tissues taken from autopsy of patients who have died as a result of COVID-19 infection.…”