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EP-4735860-A1 - COVERSLIPPER FOR AUTOMATICALLY APPLYING COVERSLIPS TO SLIDES HELD IN A SLIDE CARRIER, AND METHOD FOR HANDLING SLIDES

EP4735860A1EP 4735860 A1EP4735860 A1EP 4735860A1EP-4735860-A1

Abstract

The invention relates to a coverslipper (1000) for automatically applying coverslips to slides (10) held in a slide carrier (20), wherein the coverslipper (1000) has a gripping mechanism (100) and a coverslipping mechanism (200) and is designed to grasp the slides (10) held in the slide carrier (20) in order by means of the gripping mechanism (100) and to remove them from the slide carrier (20) and to feed them to the coverslipping mechanism (200), wherein the coverslipper (1000) is designed, after a predetermined number of unsuccessful attempts to grasp a first slide held in the slide carrier (20), to automatically stop attempting to grasp the first slide and to automatically grasp a second slide (10), which is different from the first slide. The invention further relates to a method for handling slides (10) held in a slide carrier (20) in a coverslipper (1000).

Inventors

  • ULBRICH, HERMANN

Assignees

  • Leica Biosystems Nussloch GmbH

Dates

Publication Date
20260506
Application Date
20240529

Claims (11)

  1. 1. Coverslipping machine (1000) for automatically covering slides (10) held in a slide holder (20), wherein the coverslipping machine (1000) has a gripping mechanism (100) and a coverslipping mechanism (200) and is designed to grip the slides (10) held in the slide holder (20) one after the other by means of the gripping mechanism (100) and to remove them from the slide holder (20) and to feed them to the coverslipping mechanism (200), wherein the coverslipping machine (1000) is designed to automatically abort the gripping of the first slide after a predetermined number of unsuccessful attempts to grip a first slide held in the slide holder (20) and to automatically grip a second slide (10) that is different from the first.
  2. 2. Coverslipping machine (1000) according to claim 1, which is configured to store and/or display a position of the first slide in the slide holder (20).
  3. 3. Automatic coverslipper (1000) according to claim 1 or 2, which is designed to store and/or display an unsuccessful attempt to grip the first slide.
  4. 4. Coverslipper (1000) according to one of the preceding claims, which has a second coverslipping mechanism (200') which is adapted to receive manually fed slides (10).
  5. 5. Coverslipper (1000) according to claim 4, which is configured to receive configuration parameters for the second coverslipping mechanism (200') from a user.
  6. 6. Coverslipping machine (1000) according to one of the preceding claims, which has a display device (400) and/or a human/machine interface.
  7. 7. A method for handling slides (10) held in a slide holder (20) in a coverslipping machine (1000), the coverslipping machine (1000) having a gripping mechanism (100) and a coverslipping mechanism (200), comprising: Moving (2010) the gripping mechanism (100) to a first slide of the slides (10) held in the slide holder (20), Gripping (2020) the first slide with the gripping mechanism (100), checking (2030) whether the first slide has been gripped by the gripping mechanism (100) if it is determined that the first slide has not been gripped, moving (2010) the gripping mechanism (100) to a second slide different from the first slide.
  8. 8. The method of claim 7, further comprising: if it is determined that the first slide has not been gripped, storing and/or displaying (2080) a position of the first slide in the slide holder (20).
  9. 9. The method of claim 7 or 8, wherein checking (2030) whether the first slide has been gripped comprises: Check (2070) whether the first slide has not been grasped for at least a predetermined number of unsuccessful grasp attempts.
  10. 10. The method of any one of the preceding claims 7 to 9, further comprising: when it is determined that the first slide has been gripped, moving (2040) the first slide to the coverslipping mechanism (200) and/or coverslipping (2050) the first slide.
  11. 11. Coverslipping machine according to one of claims 1 to 6, which is designed to carry out a method according to one of claims 7 to 10.

Description

Coverslipper for automatically covering slides held in a slide holder and method for handling slides Description The present invention relates to a coverslipping machine for automatically covering slides held in a slide holder, which is designed to grip the slides held in the slide holder one after the other by means of the gripping mechanism and to remove them from the slide holder and feed them to the coverslipping mechanism. The present invention also relates to a method for handling slides. Background of the invention For pathological examinations, stained preparations or tissue samples, such as a histological section, are fixed on slides and covered with a cover glass. The preparations covered in this way can then be examined under a microscope. The use of coverslip machines is particularly suitable for applying the cover glass to the microscopic slide, in which the cover glasses are applied or the individual slides are covered in an automated process. For this process, several slides with tissue samples are sorted into compartments or slots in a rack or slide holder. The rack is fed to the coverslip machine, where one slide is taken from the rack and a mounting agent, a mounting medium, is applied to the slide. The cover glass is then applied to the slide to seal the tissue sample on the slide. A slide can be removed from the rack using a gripping mechanism. Such a glass coverslipping machine is, for example, sold by the applicant under the name "Leica CV 5030". disclosure of the invention According to the invention, a coverslipping machine for automatically covering slides held in a slide holder or rack and a method for handling slides with the features of the independent patent claims are proposed. Advantageous embodiments are the subject of the subclaims and the following description. The invention has the advantage that slides that cannot be gripped by the gripping mechanism for whatever reason do not lead to an error or an interruption in the workflow, and thus the need for manual user intervention is eliminated or at least reduced. Rather, the coverslipping process can be continued and completed for all slides that can be safely gripped. The faulty slides can be identified very easily. To this end, the invention makes use of the measure of not interrupting the process sequence if an inadmissibly high number of incorrect attempts are made to grip a first slide, but rather continuing with a different second slide, expediently the slide that follows in the process sequence. In detail, the coverslipping machine according to the invention is designed to automatically stop gripping the first slide after a predetermined number of unsuccessful attempts to grip a first slide held in the slide holder and to automatically grip a second slide that is different from the first. The predetermined number can also be one, i.e. after each unsuccessful attempt to grip, the process continues with another slide, but the predetermined number is expediently greater than one, e.g. three, so that short-term gripping disturbances do not immediately lead to the slide being skipped. The inaccessible first slide is in particular marked so that it is identifiable for the user. For example, provision can be made to visually display a rack position of the inaccessible or error-causing first slide, for example on a display device of the coverslipping machine, for example by indicating the rack position number. Generally, coverslippers are used to cover slides of different dimensions, with a range of dimensions or formats being standardized in DIN ISO 8037-1. This is because different types and sizes of objects, e.g. tissue sections, cells or smears, have to be covered. Therefore, it can happen that slides of different formats are in one rack, but available coverslippers can only be set to one slide format per automatic coverslipping process or coverslipping batch (automatic process for serially covering a series of slides). This can lead to problems in the automatic coverslipping process because a slide has a different format than expected and cannot then be gripped. Conventionally, the coverslipper can be designed to automatically switch to an error or PAUSE mode if the gripping mechanism cannot grip or grasp a slide after three attempts. Other reasons can also prevent slides from being gripped securely, such as poorly stuck-on labels, sticky labels, broken edges, etc. If there is an interruption, the slide causing the error usually has to be searched for first and then removed from the coverslipper and sorted out. The interrupted automatic process then has to be started again. This is very time-consuming. However, within the scope of the invention, the process is now automatically continued with another slide, so that there is no interruption or pause. In one embodiment, the coverslipping machine is designed to store and/or display a position of the first (i.e. error-causing) slide in the slide holder, in particular on a di