LAUSR

The typical time to prepare clinical tissue specimens for TEM varies from 1-2 days to several hours, with microwave processing heretofore providing the most rapid preparation [1, 2]. Microwave processing is accomplished by the manual exchange of each processing reagent alternated by placing the reagent-immersed specimens into a microwave oven. Following the final resin infiltration step, each tissue samples is then manually transferred to an embedding mold for polymerization. This manual process requires the full attention of the microscopist for the entire protocol followed by an hour to transfer specimens to embedding molds [2]. In the present study, mammalian tissues were automatically prepared for TEM in 2 hours or less (prior to resin curing) with an ASP-1000 Automatic Specimen Processor. Rather than microwaves, the ASP used rapid mixing to accelerate processing by enhancing reagent diffusion. Specimens remained in the same labeled mPrep capsule from initial fixation through sectioning, thus eliminating tedious manual transfers to embedding molds and ensuring continuous specimen labeling.