Summary:
Techcyte and Pramana are launching a smart, inline volumetric digital scanning technology that integrates real-time AI analysis during microbiology slide scanning to improve image quality and efficiency.
Takeaways:
- Advanced Scanning Technology: Pramana’s Spectral scanners perform real-time volumetric scanning using GPU-accelerated software to fuse high-quality pixels from Z-stacks, improving image clarity for challenging microbiology samples.
- AI Integration at the Edge: Techcyte’s AI runs directly on the scanner, enabling real-time object detection and selective Z-stack retention, reducing data load and enhancing diagnostic accuracy.
- Improved Workflow and Adoption: This joint solution reduces manual labor, processing time, and costs, paving the way for broader adoption of digital workflows in microbiology labs by late 2025.
Techcyte and Pramana have announced the upcoming launch of smart, inline, volumetric digital scanning. This innovation aims to set the standard for how microbiology slides are digitized. Techcyte algorithms can now be run on Pramana scanners during scanning, delivering the highest quality imaging of parasitology, gram, and AFB slides.
The Challenge of Digitizing Microbiology Slides
Digitizing microbiology slides is a significant challenge for most whole slide scanners. Wet preps, sparse slides, and varying sample thickness can result in whole slide images that are not acceptable, which negatively impacts operational costs and manual labor. Many scanners can scan multiple z-stacks, which increases scan time, file size, and processing and storage costs.
In contrast, Pramana’s Spectral series of scanners use sophisticated software and a powerful GPU to enable real-time volumetric digital scanning, capturing Z-stacks and fusing the best pixels to produce high quality images. The original Z-stacks can be retained for further review in areas where AI identifies significant objects. The software also features onboard quality control to detect and correct focus, artifacts, and stitching issues, without user intervention.
Volumetric Digital Scanning Gets AI Upgrade
Building on this foundation, Techcyte’s AI algorithms (for research use only) can now be deployed directly on Pramana’s scanners, the first and only to offer edge AI compute capabilities. During scanning, the AI analyzes each field of view in real time and can flag relevant objects, mimicking the fine focus function in a microscope with AI automation. Z-stacks are saved only in those areas around the objects of interest.
“This capability allows us to advance the practice of digital microbiology,” says Ben Cahoon, CEO at Techcyte. “Smart inline volumetric scanning brings intelligence into the digital scanning process, helping provide labs with in-focus and z-stacked images that bring the benefits of going digital to microbiology.”
“Smart inline volumetric scanning brings to reality the vision that we had for our platform from day one,” says Mike Koenig, Chief Business Officer at Pramana. “Pramana’s scanner architecture allows us to support complex sample types from partners like Techcyte with speed and precision—now enhanced even further by inline AI.”
This joint innovation sets the stage for expanded digital adoption in areas like bacteriology, parasitology, and cytology, where object-level resolution in three dimensions can be helpful for reads, and is expected to be available to customers in Q4 of 2025.
