Method for tracking and imaging biological samples

• US 20070124084A1
• Filed: 12/27/2006
• Published: 05/31/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 11/13/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Agilent Technologies, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Dako Denmark A/S (Agilent Technologies, Inc.)
• Inventors: Torre-Bueno, Jose
• Granted Patent: US 9,633,176 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 702/19
• CPC Class Codes: B01L 3/545 for laboratory containers
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 2035/00138 Slides
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 2035/00742 Type of codes
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 2035/00752 bar codes
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 2035/00831 identification of the sample, e.g. patient identity, place of sampling
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 2035/00841 results of the analyses
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 2035/00881 network configurations
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 2035/0091 GUI [graphical user interfaces]
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 35/00029 provided with flat sample substrates, e.g. slides G01N35/028 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 35/00732 Identification of carriers, materials or components in automatic analysers
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 35/00871 Communications between instruments or with remote terminals
• CPC Class Codes: G16B 40/00 ICT specially adapted for biostatistics; ICT specially adapted for bioinformatics-related machine learning or data mining, e.g. knowledge discovery or pattern finding
• CPC Class Codes: G16B 50/00 ICT programming tools or database systems specially adapted for bioinformatics
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/40 for data related to laboratory analysis, e.g. patient specimen analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/20 for handling medical images, e.g. DICOM, HL7 or PACS
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 70/60 relating to pathologies

Abstract

Systems, methods, and apparatus are described for the handling of biological specimens for analysis. The systems, methods and apparatus are designed to reduce errors in misidentification, incorrect processing, and recordkeeping and reporting. The systems, methods, and apparatus can also provide real time tracking of samples at any stage, from collection to processing to analyzing to storage.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

obtaining a sample of biological material;

forming an electronic image indicative of said sample of biological material;

maintaining a lossless compressed version of the electronic image at a data center, as a reference copy of the electronic image of the biological material; and

sending a lossy compressed image to a client workstation, to allow review of the electronic image.

2. A method as in claim 1, further comprising:

receiving region coordinates from the client workstation, and

carrying out an image analysis at the data center based on the lossless compressed image.