Rapid digital pathology of H&E-stained fresh human brain specimens as an alternative to frozen biopsy.

Brain tumors can be fatal and surgery is often required to remove them. During surgery, clinicians need to look for any leftover tumor tissue so that recurrence of the disease can be avoided. This requires sectioning of frozen tissue samples, staining them, and visualizing structural details under a microscope in the lab. This process should be fast to make the operation shorter and safer for the patient. Here, we provide an alternative approach to staining and imaging tumor samples, which is much faster than the current process. We show that our approach works with fresh tumor samples, avoiding the need to freeze and physically section them. We can distinguish normal versus tumor tissues, and pathologists do not require special training to use our approach. Our approach might ultimately help to improve the speed, safety, and outcomes of brain tumor surgery.