Staining-free optical imaging techniques toward digital histopathology

The histological optical imaging is a gold standard method to observe the biological tissues, which follows routine process such as dissection, embedding, sectioning, staining, visualization and interpretation of specimens. This technique has a long history of development, and is used ubiquitously in pathology, despite being highly time and labour-intensive. Staining-free optical imaging offers the unique advantage of bypassing the cumbersome staining process during specimen preparation and distinguishing the structure of tissue slides based solely on optical contrast. Here, we introduce the potential of quantitative phase imaging as a new digital histopathologic tool. Optical imaging based on phase contrast in histopathology could build fast feedback of anatomy of tissues or organs due to its simplicity, efficiency, robustness, and high-throughput capabilities. This presentation covers the latest work of large-scale and fast tissue imaging using quantitative phase imaging. Specifically, the talk will highlight comparison study over the conventional method in histopahology and its adaptation with artificial intelligence such as the virtual staining and resolution enhancement.