The Socialization of Microscopes

and discovery will have a tremendous impact on how researchers and clinicians can share and discuss microscopy images to diagnose diseases. Also, the interface is user friendly, with a minimal learning curve and more comfortable for the eyes than a conventional microscope. In addition, the field-of-view (the part of the image that you see at a specific zoom level and resolution) is substantially larger on the full HD 46 inch display.

You think your camera has zoom? Check this out: 1,000 fold magnification of sub-cellular details of a sample and the sample can be as large as 200 gigabytes. To put this into easier terms, that amount of data is more than a mile of books on a shelf.

But every new invention must have a purpose for its survival. In this case, it’s time savings, collaborative impact and diagnostic accuracy. Now you can consult with someone thousands of miles away on the exact same image, in the exact same location and area of interest, at extremely high resolution.

The long-term gain to the medical diagnostic industry can not be accurately measured yet – it could saves thousands of lives, but what the extreme microscope does promise is a harmonization and standardization of microscopy diagnostic impact on the quality of all image-based diagnostics, such as assessment of protein expression in tissue samples, classification of tissue samples based on morphology etc. Results of a large number of biological and medical assays interpreted through a microscope. The extreme microscope will enable a number of subjective and time-consuming tasks such as counting the number of cells staining positive for a biomarker or locating cells infected with a parasite like malaria, to be replaced by highly repeatable and robust computer vision applications.  

“Typically the user has had to look at hundreds of fields-of-view and keep a tally with a hand-held counter or with pen on paper. But, with the extreme microscope, digital highly magnified images of the entire sample area enable repeatable particle counts over vast sample areas (thousands of fields-of-view),” added Lundin.

Lundin also believes that large-scale digitization of all tissue samples will also allow for the development of a whole new field of image-based analysis methods.

So, what will the extreme microscope actually change? According to Dr. Jonathan Knowles, former President of Research, Roche Group and vice chairman, Caris Life Sciences, Dallas, Texas, the extreme microscope is a revolutionary piece of technology that will dramatically change how pathology is practiced, specifically in regard to cancer research.

“The ability to rapidly call up and examine images combined with the growing ability to assist the pathologist with image analysis and enhancing technologies is central to finding the right treatment for each cancer patient,” added Dr. Knowles. “Just as important, the extreme microscope allows pathologists to view images prepared at remote sites which will provide much needed standardization of sample preparation and staining.  This will be one of the key advances required to bring better personalized cancer care to patients around the world."

Ari-Pekka Laitsaari, an independent advisor specializing in biotech and life sciences investments agrees. “The extreme microscope has the potential to increase the accuracy of diagnostics ten-fold. We will now be able to discover and share diagnosis faster than we ever have before and this will have a tremendous impact on how teaching can be done as well as how researchers and clinicians can share and discuss microscopy images.”

I asked Dr. Lundin what he wanted to see happen with the extreme microscope and what his vision would be for it and his answer was simple. “The microscope, and how it has been used has looked the same for almost the past 400 years. I see this invention as the first shift in how the next evolution of microscopy will be implemented.”

For Dr. Lundin, an experienced cancer biomarker researcher with microscopic imaging, biobanks, biostatistics and biomedical informatics expertise, his extreme microscope might just be the tool we need to help cure cancer.