Importance

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Abstract

A tissue or like processing method involving application of liquids to carrier-mounted material, e.g. a thin tissue section mounted on a microscope slide (10), is characterized by disposing a channel-defining element (1) adjacent to the carrier (10) to form an assembly providing an enclosure (11) for the material on the carrier. The enclosure (11) has an inlet (13) and an outlet (14) and has capillary dimensions. The assembly is disposed with the inlet (13) above the outlet (14) and liquid introduced into the inlet fills the enclosure and is retained in contact with the material on the carrier by surface tension effect. Further liquid introduced to the inlet (13) displaces the first liquid progressively to the outlet (14). A sequence of liquids can thus be brought successively into contact with the material with minimum wastage, by feeding the liquids successively to the inlet (13) of an assembly. A support for a plurality of assemblies to permit concurrent operations upon a set of material samples is disclosed, and a machine for automated processing, e.g. immunostaining, of a batch of tissue samples is also disclosed.

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First Claim