The Daily Scan

IHCWorld website

Here's another nice online resource: IHCWorld, the "Online Center for Immunohistochemistry". The introduction is a nice overview of IHC analysis. There's also a nice index to various resources for IHC image analysis, and a nice survey of Tissue Microarrays (TMAs).

What I find so interesting about IHC analysis is that the preparation of IHC samples is amazingly well-documented and very quantitative, but the analysis of the samples is less documented and subjective. Over time, improvements in techniques for imaging IHC slide samples and in the software to quantitatively analyze virtual slides will change this. The diagnosis will always be made by the Pathologist, but it will be made based on more quantitative information.

Medical DeviceLink website

Here's an interesting website: Medical DeviceLink, "the platform website for the medical device industry". They run industry news and features - it is admittedly pro-vendor, but a nice source of information nonetheless. Here's a news page for medical imaging equipment. (No RSS feed, unfortunately...)

For example, here's a year-old article, Making image-analysis technology accessible to community pathologists, written by Carl W. Apfelbach and Jose de la Torre-Bueno from ChromaVision medical systems. It's a nice survey of the challenges in automating IHC analysis for Pathology.

Brown Norway rat genome sequenced

The Scientist reports:

"An international collaboration of genome sequencing teams previously at odds over strategy puts aside its differences this week in Nature to publish the third complete mammalian genome sequence."

What's interesting about these sequencing projects is not only the methods used to acquire the data, but the methods used to analyze the data afterward. Gene sequencing is a little like virtual microscopy in this regard; you gather a lot of information, and then you have to find the needles in the haystack which are medically significant. Great stuff!

Sony 50GB blu-ray DVDs

The Register reports Sony preps 50GB next-gen blu-ray video deck. Blu-ray discs are DVDs recordered at a shorter laser wavelength than conventional DVDs, enabling higher density data storage. The discs are positioned as video storage, but they'll be perfect for virtual slides, too :)

Aperio at AACR

Hey, we're exhibiting at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, in Orlando Florida. If you're attending the conference, please be sure to check us out. We have a ScanScope in our booth and are scanning slides in realtime for your viewing pleasure :)

Lots of our competitors and partners (PDF) are exhibiting, too, so if you're interested in virtual microscopy it's a great place to be. If you'd like to setup a meeting, please say so in the comments to this item and we'll get back to you right away.

The Panda's Thumb

There's a great group blog called The Panda's Thumb which you might find interesting:

The Panda's Thumb is dedicated to explaining the theory of evolution, critiquing the claims of the anti-evolution movement, and defending the integrity of science and science education in America and around the world."

Its impressive group of contributors post often about the philosophy of science, especially to explain evolutionary theory and to debunk pseudo-science. You may not agree with everything but I think you'll find it interesting and thought-provoking.

(Oh yeah, they DO have an RSS feed...)

Introducing The Scientist

Have you read The Scientist? It is a great online magazine for people in bio-technical fields. Some nice scientific philosophy, too. In addition to the website they have an email list and you can sign up to receive updates. (No, they don't support RSS yet, but I'm sure they will soon And they do support RSS. :)

As an example, their latest issue has an interesting article on The Digitization of Museum Specimens. Digitization has two benefits - first, data can be shared widely all over the world, increasing the utilization of valuable specimens, and second, information can be preserved indefinitely, even when the original specimens cannot.

Anyway The Scientist is a great resource, check it out!

[more] Blogging and RSS

Information Today has a nice article: Blogging and RSS — The "What's It?" and "How To" of Powerful New Web Tools for Educators. More background and detail on how this new technology is being used to disseminate information. Cool.

FSU Microscopy Primer

Florida State University hosts a terrific Microscopy Primer, including a whole section on Virtual Microscopy. They have lots of little Java-based tutorials to demonstrate various types of microscopy. The section on Digital Imaging is wonderful. They don't [yet] explain the advantages of line scan cameras over 2D CCD arrays, but I'm sure they will :)

The site also features a cool Microscopy Museum. It is interesting to see how much has changed in 400 years - and how much hasn't...

Anyway it is a terrific resource, if you're interested in Virtual Microscopy, you'll find it very informative.

Medscape

There's a terrific website named MedScape which is a great source of medical news. If you haven't checked it out, please do so!

In my all about blogs post I mentioned RSS, a technology for easily reading news from many different websites. MedScape has customized RSS feeds for a large number of medical fields. For example, I subscribe to "Allergy & Clinical Immunology", "Hematology-Oncology", "Molecular Medicine", "Pharmacotherapy", "Radiology", and "Technology & Medicine", as well as a general news feed called "Medscape Today" (these links are all RSS feeds - use them to subscribe in your RSS reader).

This is just a great resource - a good example of the way the web is changing the way we get and use information.