Policies

Slide Preparation

• Coverslips: Must completely cover the sample.
• Drying: Slides must be 100% dry before submission.
• Sealing: Do not use nail polish and remove pap pen on fluorescent slides
• Bubbles: Avoid bubbles, as adjacent areas will lose focus.
• Mounting media: Do not use mounting media containing DAPI.
• Recommendation: We suggest Thermo Fisher Scientific Molecular Probes ProLong Diamond Antifade Mountant.

Cleaning & Quality

• Cleanliness: Remove all dust, fingerprints, and residue from both sides.
• Solvents: Clean using xylene, 70% ethanol, or commercial slide cleaner.
• Broken Slides: Some broken slides can be scanned on some systems.
• Cleaning Fees: Dirty slides will incur extra technician time charges.

Labeling & Privacy

• Legibility: Labels must be clear, thin, perfectly flat, and easy to read.
• Privacy Rules: No Protected Health Information (PHI) like names or surgical accession numbers.
• Rejection: Slides with PHI will not be scanned until re-labeled.
• Tracking: You must maintain the link between original and new labels.
• Labeling Fees: Hard-to-read labels will incur extra technician time charges.

Images and data acquired in the facility are generally distributed to investigators using UIC Box and are retained on Department of Pathology servers for 1-2 years after acquisition.  After this time, images are moved to Research Data Lake for long term storage.  Users should keep a copy of their images and associated data for future use.

All facility users are required to acknowledge the use of the facility in all published articles that utilize material created in the facility. An example of an appropriate acknowledgement may be: “Imaging services were provided by the Research Tissue Imaging Core at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  If a staff member contributed significantly to the publication appropriate authorship must be designated.