Yet another step

Photoshop works well with others

During the late 90's two of my main projects combined imaging abilities with scientific and technical skills.

The evaluation of cell cycle inhibitors for the oncology group relying on the evaluation of tumors from the xenograft model. With the digital darkroom established multitudes of tumor sections were analyzed by me in my lab. My lab partners handled the in vivo portion of the experiments which took quite a but of there efforts. I would be present at the take down and collect and gross the tumors. Then the sections (no thicker than a nickel to allow for proper fixation) were processed onto paraffin blocks. The samples were sectioned at 5 microns and stained with hematoxylin & eosin for morphological examination. For the analysis of the triad of tumor growth - Proliferation, Angiogenesis, and Apoptosis. Sections were stained using immunohistochemistry of BrdU and Factor VIII , and the Apotag in situ kit.

The image acquisition and analysis of MCID M2 system worked well with the image compositions and output features of Photoshop. I was able to effectively and efficiently communicate my findings by creating composites of the different stained images of the serial sections of the tumors.

The details can be found in these two papers -

Novel small molecule alpha v integrin antagonists: comparative anti-cancer efficacy with known angiogenesis inhibitors.
Anticancer Res. 1999 Mar-Apr;19(2A):959-68.

Tumor biology: use of tiled images in conjunction with measurements of cellular proliferation and death in response to drug treatments.
Clin Cancer Res. 2000 Aug;6(8):3361-70.

The other project was to determine a compound potential for prevented infarct damage due to a stroke. In this case I developed and validated the images analysis methodology and gave feedback to those conducting the in vivo portion of the work. Here, Image Pro Plus 4.1 from Media Cybernetics was invaluable for successfully completing the research. I was able to determine a more objective method to measure the infarcted ares of the brain sections. Later I published my work and presented it in front of a neurobiology section at Experimental Biology in Orlando, 2000.

My publication, An objective procedure for ischemic area evaluation of the stroke intraluminal thread model in the mouse and rat. J Neurosci Methods. 2002 Jan 15;113(1):51-8, was published after I was laid off (details next entry).

So, I didn't have access to my own article unless I paid $30 to the publisher. I sure I will rant about the situation in scientific publishing later.

With Photoshop CS3 Extended I could conduct the same image processing and analysis that I did with Image Pro Plus. I hope to share that full workflow when I have it down on paper.