Patent ID: 7869641

Claim:
A device for processing a low resolution image from a slide to determine a specimen location on the slide, comprising: means for cropping the low resolution image to remove portions of the low resolution image that correspond to non-slide objects, the means for cropping including means for determining a location of at least one boundary by searching at least one interval corresponding to at least one boundary region; software implemented filter means for identifying a region containing a specimen on a slide using knowledge of typical appearance and location of specimen and non-specimen slide regions, wherein the means for identifying analyzes characteristics of the slide, compares the analyzed characteristics using knowledge of typical appearance and location of specimen and non-specimen slide regions, and outputs a result that indicates which regions of the slide should be imaged, the result not including portions of the image falling outside of the boundary, and transposes positions of the result into actual stage coordinates, the software implemented filter means including means for converting a copy of the low resolution image to a grayscale image, and means for analyzing at least one of mean and standard deviation of local pixel intensities to generate a threshold value, the software implemented filter means using the local pixel intensity to differentiate tissue-containing regions from blank regions and other non-tissue containing regions; and means for capturing a microscopic image at the actual stage coordinates.