US 6,993,169 C1 (6920th)
SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR FINDING REGIONS OF INTEREST FOR MICROSCOPIC DIGITAL MONTAGE IMAGING
Arthur W. Wetzel, Murrysville, Pa.; John R. Gilbertson, II, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Jeffrey A. Beckstead, Valencia, Pa.; Patricia A. Feineigle, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Christopher R. Hauser, Pittsburgh, Pa., and Frank A. Palmieri, Jr., Gibsonia, Pa., assignors to Carl Zeiss MicroImaging AIS, Inc., Thornwood, N.Y.
Reexamination Request No. 90/008,030, Aug. 4, 2006.
Reexamination Certificate for Patent 6,993,169, issued Jan. 31, 2006, Appl. No. 758,037, Jan. 11, 2001.
Int. Cl. G06K 9/00 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 382—128
OG exemplary drawing
AS A RESULT OF REEXAMINATION, IT HAS BEEN DETERMINED THAT:
Claim 1 is determined to be patentable as amended.
Claims 2-12, dependent on an amended claim, are determined to be patentable.
New claims 13-21 are added and determined to be patentable.
1. A computer implemented method for processing a low resolution digital image from a slide to determine a specimen [locations]location on the slide, the computer implemented method comprising:
cropping the low resolution digital image to remove portions of the low resolution digital image that correspond to non-slide objects, said cropping including determining a location of at least one boundary by searching at least one interval corresponding to at least one boundary region, the cropping resulting in a cropped digital image;
inputting the cropped digital image into a tissue finding component, wherein the tissue finding component identifies a region containing the specimen by applying a filter that incorporates knowledge of typical appearance and location of specimen and non-specimen slide regions and outputs a matrix whose values indicate which regions of the slide should be imaged, the matrix not including portions of the image falling outside of the boundary; and
transposing position of the matrix into actual microscope stage coordinates, and capturing a microscope image at those stage coordinates.