Measuring Protein Expression in Tissue: The Complementary Roles of Brightfield and Fluorescence in Whole Slide Scanning

Reproducible protein expression measurement is important in many areas of tissue research and must address the inherently high biological variability across a single tissue section. Whole slide imaging is a new technology offering substantial improvements for both brightfield and fluorescence measurement of protein expression. Here, Gustashaw et al discuss the latest developments in fluorescence and brightfield whole slide imaging as it applies to protein expression, and discuss how the 2 approaches differ and are complementary. They conclude that whole slide image analysis techniques for quantitation in brightfield and fluorescent protein expression algorithms are continuously improving, as the hardware becomes more reliable. Both brightfield and fluorescent imaging have valuable contributions to make in protein expression studies.