Aperio Awarded Patent for Innovation that Improves Digital Pathology Workflow

Creation of complete digital slide image file – during scanning – results in fastest scanners, streamlines workflow and simplifies IT

Vista, CA – April 20, 2011 – Aperio, the global leader in providing digital pathology solutions that improve patient care, announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued the company patent No. 7,826,649 entitled, “Data Management in a Linear-array-based Microscope Slide Scanner.”

The ‘649 patent describes techniques invented by Aperio for efficiently processing large image files—during the scanning process—to create a single high-quality digital slide image. The ability to create a single digital slide, including image compression, during the scanning process results in faster overall scanning and streamlines digital pathology workflow.

“This patent highlights our ability to create a single digital slide image during the scanning process, which is why our scanners continue to be the fastest on the market,” commented Dirk G. Soenksen, CEO of Aperio. “Our sub-95 second scan time includes all steps required to create a single digital slide image file by the scanning instrument. This patent requires others to divide the scanning process between the scanning instrument and a dedicated server, and to post-compress the imagery data on the server. Doing so takes much longer than their advertised scanning time, complicates the workflow, and requires moving and storing gigabytes of imagery data.”

Aperio has the highest throughput scanners available today. The company’s family of ScanScope® scanners are based on line-scanning, which has become the standard for scanning performance and image quality in the digital pathology industry. Line scanning rapidly produces seamless digital slide images with unsurpassed image quality, and is critical to a pathologist’s ability to make informed diagnoses and prognoses of diseases.

The patent strengthens Aperio’s comprehensive intellectual property portfolio comprising more than 80 issued and pending patents world-wide, and provides the company with ownership of key innovations that address critical pathology imaging needs.

With more system installations than all other digital pathology vendors combined, Aperio is the true global leader and reliable choice for world class digital pathology solutions. The company boasts a global installed base of more than 800 systems in over 30 countries, including more than 500 systems in hospitals and reference laboratories, the 13 largest pharmaceutical companies and a multitude of biotechnology and government organizations.

About Aperio

Aperio is the leading provider of digital pathology solutions in hospitals, reference labs, and pharmaceutical and research institutions across the world. Today, our affordable and complete product portfolio improves patient care by enhancing quality assurance, delivering more efficient workflows, facilitating access to new and more targeted therapies, and improving pathologists’ skills via lifelong education. Our comprehensive product line features our ScanScope® scanners, Spectrum™ image management (PACS) software, SecondSlide® slide sharing service for pathology, and image analysis tools and services. Aperio’s products are FDA cleared for specific clinical applications, and are intended for research and education use for other applications. For clearance updates and more information please visit

www.aperio.com