Patent ID: 7079673

Claim:
A method comprising the steps of: capturing an image of a tissue microarray at a first magnification, the tissue microarray including a plurality of disks, each disk including a sample of a biological specimen; locating a first group of disks from the plurality of disks using one or more visual features of the first group of disks, the locating comprising: generating a disk template that is substantially the same size as the disks in the captured image; matching the template to the said one or more visual features of said first group of disks; and determining the coordinates of candidate disk cores; identifying a grid defined by the first group of disks by locating rows and columns connecting said candidate disk cores; locating a second group of disks from the plurality of disks using grid intersections in the identified grid to locate disks which were not located using said template and at positions that do not include the one or more visual features of the first group of disks; capturing an image of each one of the first group of disks and the second group of disks at a second magnification; and storing the captured images.