JPH0324618B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (Technical field to which the invention pertains) The present invention relates to an automatic specimen enclosing device, and particularly to a slide glass that is supplied to a conveying means at predetermined time intervals. The present invention relates to an automatic specimen enclosing device that monitors slide glasses during the transportation process and determines whether or not to carry out the operations.

(Prior art and its problems) In general, tissue specimens for microscopy used for cell tissue examination etc. are prepared by pre-treatment.
The material cut out to an appropriate size is dehydrated with alcohol, etc., embedded in paraffin, etc., and further thinly sliced. The thin section of the specimen obtained is attached to a slide glass and stained, and then placed in a xylene bath. Store in a tank such as These specimens are usually pulled from the xylene bath en masse and coated with glue and 0.09-0.1 mm
Only when the specimen is enclosed in a cover glass of a certain degree is it considered to be an enclosed specimen suitable for preservation.

However, conventionally, most of these steps have been performed manually. In recent years, efforts have been made to automate each of these processing steps, but there are very few fully automated encapsulation devices for specimens attached to glass slides, and only a few have been developed. However, there are still various problems.

(Object of the Invention) The object of the present invention is to fully automate such a specimen encapsulation device, and to detect a slide glass moving on a conveyance path and perform a predetermined operation at a predetermined position. An object of the present invention is to provide an automatic specimen enclosing device having such a control mechanism.

(Summary of the Invention) In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a transport means for moving a slide glass supplied on a transport path at a predetermined pitch at predetermined time intervals;
slide glass detection means for detecting whether or not the slide glass is supplied near the position where the slide glass is supplied; and individual slide glasses that move on the conveyance path corresponding to positions for each pitch on the conveyance path. It has a plurality of blocks in which data corresponding to the slide glass and the slide glass presence/absence signal detected by the slide glass detection means can be stored as set data, and the set data is transferred to the next moving position in synchronization with the movement of the slide glass. and a storage device movable to the adjacent block corresponding to the slide glass, and the set data stored in the block at a plurality of movement positions related to the predetermined pitch for each slide glass moving on the conveyance path. The present invention is characterized by comprising a control section that instructs a series of different operations related to the slide glass based on the above.

(Embodiment of the Invention) An embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail below based on the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows an outline of the configuration of an automatic specimen enclosing device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Here, 100 is a slide glass shooter that supplies slide glasses 110 one by one to a conveying device 200 at predetermined time intervals. It is transported from the right to the left.

300 is a discrimination device, and the slide glass 110 on the conveyance device 200 is first transferred to this discrimination device 300.
The size of the specimen attached to the top surface is determined by Next, the slide glass 110 receives the detection of the size of the specimen by the discrimination device 300.
is sent to the liquid injection device 400, where adhesive liquid is supplied onto the slide glass 110 according to the size of the specimen.

500 is a cover glass sorting and supplying device. 5
Reference numeral 10 denotes the sorter, and the sorter 510 has a sorting section 511 that stores cover glasses of a plurality of types, four different sizes in this example, stacked up and down. Only one cover glass of a corresponding size can be selectively pulled out by the extraction mechanism 530. Further, the pulled-out cover glass is guided by the transfer mechanism 550 onto the slide glass that has finished dripping the adhesive liquid and has been conveyed to the bonding position.

Below the slide glass 110 at this adhesion position, slide glass 11 is moved up and down at appropriate timing.
Adhesive device 6 for adhering 0 and the cover glass
00 is provided. Therefore, slide glass 110
is placed on the pedestal of the adhesive device 600, and
The cover glass is gently dropped from above and a slight pressing force is applied to complete the adhesive encapsulation.

The glass slides 110 that have been completely encapsulated are pushed out one after another into the product reservoir 710 of the storage device 700. When a predetermined number of glass slides 110 have been sealed in this manner and accumulate in the product reservoir 710 (in this example,
10 sheets) are automatically pushed out to a tray (receiving tray) 750 by an extrusion mechanism 730, and one gigantic slide glass encapsulation is completed with a total of 40 products stored in the tray.

Furthermore, 800 is a control unit that controls these series of enclosing operations by a microcomputer (CPU) not shown, and 810 is an operation panel thereof. The operation panel 810 is provided with a display, switches, various display means when an abnormality occurs, etc., and the enclosing device can be operated and its operation can be monitored via the operation panel 810. Note that 820 is a switch box equipped with a button switch for starting and stopping the enclosing device.

Next, a control mechanism for detecting the movement of the slide glass 110 and performing each work operation will be explained with reference to FIG. Here, 111 to 118 are slide glasses supplied onto the conveyance path 210 of the conveyance device 200, and these slide glasses 1
11 to 118 are dropped onto the conveyance path 210 at predetermined time intervals from the shooter 100 (see FIG. 1) located on the right side of the figure. Each time these slide glasses 110 are dropped, they are transported to the right at a predetermined pitch by the claws 231 of the roller chain 230 shown in FIG. 2 one after another from position 210S
They are moved to positions 10A, 210B, . . . 210G.

In this example, 301 is an actuator that starts the operation of the discrimination device 300, and 401 is the liquid injection device 4.
Actuator for starting work at 00, 60
1 is an actuator that starts work on the mounting device 600, and these actuators are started by a program according to a flowchart described later, and each device 3
Perform operations at 00, 400 and 600.

250A and 250B are sensors as slide glass detection means provided along the transport path 210 at positions 210A and 210G (see FIG. 1);
50B to each position 210A on the conveyance path 210.
The presence or absence of the slide glass 110 at ~210G can be detected.

Furthermore, the control unit 800 is provided with a memory 850 that allows the memory contents to be shifted.If the slide glass 110 is currently in the positions 210S to 210G as shown in FIG.
0 has positions 210A to 21 as shown in FIG. 3A.
Data 1 corresponding to slide glass numbers 112 to 118 for each block A to G representing G
~8 and a detection signal (“1” and “0”) of the presence or absence of a slide glass based on a binary signal is stored.

Note that this example shows a case where there is no slide glass 116 at position 210E on the conveyance path 210 shown in FIG. Furthermore, since the slide glass 112 is detected by the sensor 250A at the position 210A, "1" is stored as the glass detection signal.

Next, in such a state, the next slide glass 110 is supplied and each position 210S~
Slide glasses 111 to 118 at 210G
If moves one step to the left in Figure 2, then
The data in the memory 850 is also shifted to the left by one bit, and as shown in FIG. Corresponding data 1 and detection signal "1" are input.

However, now each slide glass 111-1
17 at such positions 210A to 210G, the control unit 800 searches for data in the memory 850, and since the detection signal "1" is input to blocks A and C, these blocks A and set flags to perform the work in C.

Note that in the automatic specimen enclosing device, the work to be performed while the transport device 200 is moving and the work to be performed during the stop period of the transport device 200 are set by sequence control. The determination operation is performed while the slide glass 110 is moving from the position 210A to the position 210B, and the liquid injection operation for supplying the adhesive onto the slide glass 110 is performed at the position 210C while the conveyance device 200 is stopped. The cover glass sorting and supply operation is mainly carried out during the stop period before the slide glass 110 is moved to the position 210E, and the enclosing operation by the adhesive device 600 is carried out at the position 210E. done during the suspension period.

Next, the control operation by the sequence control mechanism configured as described above will be explained with reference to the flowchart of FIG. 4. Now, suppose that each slide glass 110 moves one step from the state shown in FIG. 2 and then stops. First, the flag is reset, and then a signal as shown in FIG. Therefore, the detection signal of block A is “1”.
Accordingly, the A flag is set to cause the discriminator 300 to perform a determination operation.

Further, if the detection signal of block A is "0", the A flag is not set and a search is made to see if the detection signal of the next block C is "1". Thus, in this example, when the detection signal is "1", C causes the liquid injection device 400 to perform the liquid injection operation.
By setting a flag and then searching for block E, the E flag is set which causes the bonding device 600 to perform the enclosing operation when the detection signal is "1".

Furthermore, if each slide glass 110 is located at the position shown in FIG. 2, for example, the signal shown in FIG. Sometimes, the E flag is not set because the detection signal is "0".

In this way, as a result of the search, the C flag is set, so that during this stop period, a liquid injection operation is performed via the liquid injection section actuator 401, and an adhesive sealing operation is also executed via the adhesive section actuator 601. . Subsequently, each slide glass 110 is moved one step by the transport device 200, but since the A flag is set here, the size determination work of the specimen is executed via the discrimination section actuator 301 during this movement. be done.

In this way, work is performed at each predetermined position as the slide glass 110 moves and stops, and as shown in FIG. 3C, by repeating such operations, the slide glass 110 as shown in FIG. Memory 850 when array 110 is moved 6 steps
Indicates the state of data in .

(Effects of the Invention) As described above, according to the present invention, there is provided a conveyance means for moving a slide glass supplied on a conveyance path at a predetermined pitch at every predetermined time interval; slide glass detection means for detecting whether or not the slide glass has been supplied near the position; data corresponding to each pitch on the conveyance path and corresponding to each slide glass moving on the conveyance path; The slide glass presence/absence signal detected by the slide glass detection means has a plurality of blocks that can be stored as set data, and the set data is synchronized with the movement of the slide glass to the adjacent block corresponding to the next movement position. a storage device that is movable to the block; and a storage device that is movable to the slide glass at a plurality of movement positions related to the predetermined pitch for each slide glass moving on the conveyance path based on the set data stored in the block. Since a control unit is provided that instructs a series of different related operations, this storage device detects the moving slide glass at a predetermined position, and performs each operation related to specimen encapsulation at this predetermined position. A series of specimen enclosing operations can be performed continuously and automatically.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is a perspective view showing an example of the configuration of the automatic specimen enclosing device of the present invention, Fig. 2 is a block diagram showing an example of slide glass monitoring means for executing the series of operations, and Figs. 3 A to C are FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing three aspects of data movement states in the memory of the slide glass monitoring means, and a flowchart showing a procedure for executing a series of operations by the slide glass monitoring means. 100...Slide glass shooter, 110,1
11-118...Slide glass, 200...Transportation device, 210...Transportation path, 210S, 210A-21
0G...position, 230...roller chain, 231...
Claw, 250A, 250B... Slide glass detection sensor, 300... Discrimination device, 301, 401, 60
1... Actuator, 400... Liquid injection device, 500
...Cover glass sorting and supply device, 510...Selector,
511... Sorting section, 530... Extraction mechanism, 550...
Transfer mechanism, 600... Adhesive device, 700... Storage device, 710... Product reservoir, 730... Extrusion mechanism,
750...Saucer, 800...Control unit, 810...Operation panel, 820...Switch box, 850...Memory, A~
G... Block.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. Conveying means for moving a slide glass supplied on a conveyance path at a predetermined pitch at predetermined time intervals; slide glass detection means for detecting the presence or absence of a slide glass; data corresponding to each pitch on the conveyance path and corresponding to each slide glass moving on the conveyance path; and information on the presence or absence of a slide glass detected by the slide glass detection means. The signal has multiple blocks that can be stored as set data,
a storage device capable of moving the group data to the adjacent block corresponding to the next movement position in synchronization with the movement of the slide glass; An automatic specimen enclosing device comprising: a control unit that instructs a series of different operations related to the slide glass at a plurality of related movement positions based on the set of data stored in the block.