Automatization Techniques. Slide Scanning

This chapter is focused on automatic microscopy techniques. It covers a practical approach to different possible automation in microscopes. All the techniques presented in this chapter aim at capturing images with the best quality as well as do it automatically. The main section (Sect. 7.5) of the chapter focuses on slide scanning and it covers all the techniques necessary to do it such as stage motorization, automatic slide scanning approaches, and autofocus of the samples. The rest of the chapter is devoted to illumination control, and its implementation (Sect. 7.3); image calibration using basic tools (Sect. 7.4) and finally preprocessing techniques to improve image quality reducing the noise introduced by the camera or the illumination defects (Sect. 7.6). In addition to the theoretical explanation, the sections include implementation examples for clarification purposes.