Cover slip handling and mounting media dispensation for reliable automated cover slipping of large tissue sections

Good quality cover slipping is essential for a reliable histopathological diagnosis and achieving this requires precise placement of the cover glass or cover slip over the tissue specimen mounted on a glass slide, without forming air bubbles. However, manual cover slipping relies heavily on the expertise of the histologist and can be time-consuming, while commercially available automated cover-slippers are limited to handling only 1' x 3' slides suitable for small tissue sizes. For large tissue sections extracted from brain, liver, and other organs, handling large-format slides, cover slips, and dispensing the optimal amount of mounting media can be challenging. To address this challenge, we developed SLIDE PROTEKT, an automated cover-slipper system that can handle slides of sizes 6' x 8'. The reliability of the system to effectively handle large cover slips and dispense the mounting media was validated and the results are presented in this paper. The cover slip pickup mechanism had an 84% accuracy in picking cover slips without misalignments or deformations. The pressure required to pick and hold the cover slip effectively was found to be 15 kilopascals. For large format 6' x 8' slides, the optimal mounting media volume required was 5 milliliters which the system consistently dispensed with a mean error of 4.2%. The validation results highlight the potential impact of SLIDE PROTEKT in histology, particularly in the reliable cover slipping of large tissue sections extracted from the brain and other organs.