Patent ID: 8609042

Claim:
A method of cutting at least one thin section from a sample block that is arranged in a cassette and tagging at least one specimen slide such that it can be allocated to the specific sample block from which the thin section has been cut, said method comprising: removing a cassette from a cassette magazine by a removal unit, said cassette having a cassette identifier having at least one machine-readable coded information; reading the machine-readable coded information of the cassette identifier of the cassette by at least one reading unit at a point in time of one of before, during, and after removal of the cassette from the cassette magazine; generating by at least one tagging unit a specimen slide identifier that interrelates to the cassette identifier read by the reading unit, said tagging unit generating an at least machine-readable coded information for identification of the specimen slide; inserting the cassette into a microtome; transferring data from the microtome to a tagging unit via a data transfer path while the cassette is inserted into the microtome; enabling tagging of the specimen slide by the tagging unit by applying the machine-readable coded information for identifying the specimen slide onto the specimen slide only after having transferred data from the microtome to the tagging unit; tagging the specimen slide by the tagging unit by applying the machine-readable coded information for identifying the specimen slide onto the specimen slide; and cutting the thin section and transferring it onto the specimen slide that was tagged by the tagging unit.