The Daily Scan

Aperio and Olympus Announce Distribution Agreement for Virtual Microscopy Systems

Today in a joint press release Aperio Technologies, Inc. and Olympus Corporation announced the completion of a distribution agreement whereby Olympus will sell and service Aperio’s ultra-fast ScanScope® slide scanners and related virtual microscopy software in Japan. (Press release here.)

According to Dirk Soenksen, Aperio Technologies’ CEO, “We are pleased to be working with Olympus to provide ScanScope systems to the scientific and medical communities in Japan. The synergy between Olympus’ market leadership in microscopy and Aperio’s superior slide scanning technology will advance the field of virtual microscopy.”

This is big news for us - we are very excited to be working with Olympus - a world leader in microscopy - on the next generation of microscopy equipment.

Server-side Algorithm Processing

Aperio has developed a simple architecture which enables image analysis algorithms to be run server-side from a remote client. Using this architecture client software such as Aperio's ImageScope viewer can display virtual slides hosted on a remote server, then run algorithms on those images and view the results. Running algorithms server-side has many advantages, including most importantly performance. (Virtual slide images can easily comprise 10GB of image data, so transferring them to a client for processing is inefficient.)

Updated documentation for Aperio's ImageServer and Viewport ActiveX control products has been posted on the Aperio website.

Note that the Viewport is available free as part of Aperio's free ImageScope viewer, which may be downloaded here.

Arnold Beckman dies at 104

The Scientist: Arnold Beckman dies at 104:

The son of a blacksmith, Beckman created instruments that are now employed in virtually every laboratory across the globe, then used his fortune to up the pace of basic research.

The CalTech legend began his career by designing a pH meter for measuring the acidity of California lemons.