Olympus has introduced the VS800 virtual slide system, a next-generation, fast and efficient way to scan and review microscope slides in minutes.
The self-contained, eyepiece-free system offers customised proprietary Olympus optics for the highest quality scans.
In addition, with its robotic handling, it significantly increases throughput via the simultaneous loading and unloading of specimen slides.
The system provides annotation, measuring and synchronised simultaneous review of multiple images for more efficient information management and workflow.
In the US, the VS800 is intended for research and educational use only.
Users of the VS800 system will benefit from its Olympus optics, which deliver sharp, clear, bright images of high quality.
The proprietary microscope objective found exclusively in the VS800 was designed and engineered by Olympus specifically for virtual microscopy applications.
It has a high numerical aperture and flatness from edge to edge.
Because virtual slide images typically comprise multiple fields that are aligned with one another, capturing the best edge-to-edge quality of each image helps ensure optimal scanning speed and more accurate alignment.
The VS800 is said to be one of the fastest virtual slide scanners available, thanks to its high-throughput robotics.
The system is designed for facilities with higher volumes of slides or those where results are needed quickly, such as research laboratories, contract research organisations, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
With its simultaneous parallel slide loading and unloading, it offers significant advances in overall slide processing.
This means that, while the prior slide is still on the stage, the next slide is delivered and set up, ready to be scanned.
The VS800 system's real-time autofocus also aids in speeding throughput, by eliminating the need to create a focal map of the sample prior to the actual scan.
