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