Leica Aperio AT2

Leica Aperio AT2

The Leica Aperio AT2 is an automated, high-throughput brightfield digital pathology scanner engineered for whole slide imaging (WSI). The instrument digitizes standard glass microscope slides into high-resolution, contiguous pyramid TIFF or SVS files, facilitating rapid remote data review, archiving, and downstream computational image analysis.

Technical Specifications & Performance

  • Capacity: Accommodates up to 400 standard 1×3 inch glass slides simultaneously via a modular rack loading system.
  • Optical System: Equipped with an Olympus Plan Apo 20x objective lens featuring a high Numerical Aperture (NA) of 0.75. An automated optical magnification changer seamlessly enables 40x resolution imaging.
  • Resolution: Achieves a native resolution of 0.50 µm/pixel at 20x magnification, and 0.25 µm/pixel at 40x magnification.
  • Throughput & Speed: Sustains a scan speed of approximately 50 slides per hour at 20x resolution and 20 slides per hour at 40x resolution (assuming a standard 15x15mm tissue area).
  • Illumination: Powered by a long-life, stable white LED light source to ensure consistent color reproduction and sample illumination.

Core Features & Analytical Workflow

  • Linear-Array Scan Technology: Employs a patented line-scanning methodology that continuously captures image stripes along the scanning axis. Integrated software aligns these stripes to produce seamless, artifact-free whole slide files.
  • Automated Quality Control: Features an automated tissue-finder and dynamic focus tracking that adjust to topography variations. This yields a first-time scan success rate exceeding 98%, decreasing the necessity for manual rescans.
  • Horizontal Slide Path: Slides remain completely horizontal throughout the loading, scanning, and unloading cycles. This physical orientation minimizes the risk of coverslip detachment or slide breakage.
  • Software Integration: Operates on the Leica Biosystems software environment, outputting standard tiled SVS and pyramid TIFF images with either JPEG or JPEG2000 compression. Images are compatible with Aperio ImageScope viewing software and various third-party pixel-analytics platforms for multiplexed immunohistochemistry (IHC) or quantitative morphometry including Indica Labs Halo.