Case Study: Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School reduces scan times by 88% with Molecular Devices MetaMorph Microscopy Automation and Image Analysis Software

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School reduces scan times by 88% with Molecular Devices

The Laboratory of Mucosal Barrier Pathobiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, needed an automated slide-scanning solution for its tissue microarray research but lacked access to a commercial system. Their alternative methods were inefficient, requiring over 24 hours to scan a single slide. The team, led by Dr. Jerrold R. Turner, sought a flexible and user-friendly system to select numerous regions of interest and manage focusing effectively. They partnered with vendor Molecular Devices to address this challenge.

Molecular Devices developed a custom solution using its MetaMorph® software, creating a set of automated journals with a ScanSlide module. This provided the lab with assisted region selection, reliable software-based focusing, and automated image stitching. The result was an 88% reduction in scan times, completing a multi-channel slide in under 4 hours instead of 24. This efficiency enabled the creation of a public Atlas of Intestinal Transport with over 5,000 scanned images, significantly advancing the team's research capabilities.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School

Jerrold R. Turner

Professor of Pathology and Medicine