4DB Center: PSOC Scripps Research Group

DeepZoom HD-CTCs Gallery:

Process of Metastasis From the primary tumor site, cancer cells enter the microvasculature and translocate through the bloodstream to microvasculature at distant tissue sites where they can extravasate and form secondary (metastatic) tumors. Detecting and characterizing these rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) will increase our understanding of their role in metastatic dissemination.	Process for Finding HD-CTC The HD-CTC assay uses an enrichment-free immunofluorescence CTC detection method where red blood cells in patient blood samples are removed and the remaining cells are frozen and stored for subsequent use. The frozen slides are thawed and the cells are labeled with a nuclear stain and with antibodies to cytokeratin (CK) and CD45 and deposited onto a standard- sized glass slide at a density of approximately 2.5 to 3 million cells per slide.
	DEEP ZOOM: Link >> DEEP ZOOM: HD-CTCs Link >> DeepZoom Visualization Hyperlink As part of the automated computational analysis, the images from each slide are represented in the form of a virtual slide using DeepZoom technology. Each HD-CTC can be examined in the context of the entire slide by zooming in or out arbitrarily. Additionally, high magnification reimaging is also integrated into the viewer.
Imaging and Analysis Slides from each patient are imaged at 10× magnification and at multiple wavelengths using a customized high-throughput fluorescence microscope. Cells are identified computationally using nuclear signal and classified based on cytokeratin (CK) and CD45 intensity, for epithelial cells and WBCs, respectively, to identify candidate CTCs. Candidate CTCs are confirmed by a hematopathologist-trained technical analyst yielding a set of HD-CTCs per slide.