Robotic Microtome Sectioning

Each year 13 million histopathology slides are prepared in the UK for the purposes of clinical diagnosis, by 800 highly trained technicians with £40 Million NHA annual salary costs. 3 micron sections must be cut by hand from these fragile and precious biological samples for each slide. Many Pathology Departments carry large backlogs, delaying patient care, due to a shortage of trained technicians, a problem that could be solved by automation of this sectioning process. Automated sectioning would additionally improve slide quality, permitting rapid development of automated artificial intelligence solutions for pathological diagnosis, which are currently hampered by variability and poor quality of slides.
The objective of this project is to conduct a feasibility study of automating all of the processes required for microtome sectioning. This objective can be achieved through the following research components:

(1) Analysis of current processes, and automation feasibility
(2) Theoretical analysis of robotic manipulation of biological samples
(3) Development of demonstrators and performance analysis
(4) Business case analysis and further exploitation of technologies developed