Digital pathology images (scanned images of pathology microscope slides) will also be available on the platform and could be used for modelling. Many pathology slide scanners routinely used today have a magnification of 40X, although models with oil immersion of the objectives achieve a magnification of 100X.
Images with different techniques of tissue staining will be available. The most common stain in histology is the unspecific hematoxylin and eosin stain, which is suited to study the morphology of the cells and tissues. In addition to hematoxylin and eosin straining, immunohistochemistry will also be used. In this technique, antibodies binding to specific antigens in the tissue (e.g. a particular protein) are used to obtain a targeted colouring of the regions containing this antigen.
A large number of microscopy slide scanners exist, from different vendors, and the image file formats that they use are often proprietary. Many of these formats, however, are extensions of the TIFF image format with annotation metadata.
