JPH0343170B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Technical Field] The present invention relates to a thin plate sorting and supplying device, and is particularly applicable to an automatic specimen enclosing device, which extracts the size of a cover glass to be mounted on a slide glass according to the size of the specimen, and The present invention relates to a thin plate piece sorting and feeding device that can feed the thin plate pieces onto a slide glass.

[Prior art]

Tissue specimens for microscopy, which are generally used for pathology and cell composition testing, are prepared by cutting the material to an appropriate size, dehydrating it with alcohol, etc., embedding it in paraffin, etc., and slicing it into thin slices. Thereafter, a thin piece of such a specimen is attached to a glass slide, subjected to a treatment process such as a dye, and then placed in a basket and stored in a bath such as a xylene bath. However, these specimens are usually taken out of the xylene bath all together and sealed with adhesive and a cover glass of about 0.09 to 0.1 mm before they are ready for preservation.

When creating such specimens, it is necessary to prevent tissue destruction and the inclusion of air bubbles, which could lead to erroneous judgments, and to ensure that they are created quickly and accurately. However, in the past, most of the steps were done manually.

In recent years, each of these processing steps has become automated, but most of the coverslipping equipment, which uses adhesive and cover glasses to encapsulate specimens attached to glass slides, is fully automated. However, even those that have been developed still have various problems.

In particular, when attaching a cover glass, the cover glass used for encapsulation is expensive when conventional manual methods are used, and in general, a cover glass of an appropriate size is used depending on the size of the specimen. but,
When using an automatic specimen enclosing device, it is desirable to select thin plate pieces according to the size of the specimen and transport them to the bonding position, especially when specimens are prepared in units of several hundred sheets. Considering this, it is not economically advisable to use cover glasses of the same size for all of these, so it is necessary to select thin plate pieces according to the size of the specimen.

[Object] In view of the above-mentioned points, the object of the present invention is to provide a method that stores thin plate pieces of a plurality of sizes and can automatically pull out a thin plate piece of the appropriate size according to the size of the specimen. Furthermore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a thin plate piece sorting and supplying device suitable for use in the above-mentioned automatic specimen enclosing device, which can feed pulled out thin plate pieces to a predetermined position.

[Key points of the invention]

That is, the present invention includes a discrimination device that detects the size of a membrane piece attached to a flat plate piece being conveyed and outputs a size discrimination signal, and a discrimination device that stacks a plurality of thin plate pieces of different sizes. and a selection signal based on a size discrimination signal from a discrimination device, the sorting section holding thin plate pieces of a size corresponding to the selection signal is moved to a predetermined drawer position. , a thin plate sorter that can pull out only one of a plurality of laminated thin plate pieces from a sorting section at a predetermined pull-out position; An extraction mechanism that sucks and moves the drawer to a predetermined transfer position, and a transfer operation is performed by adsorbing the thin plate piece guided to the transfer position, and the membrane piece whose size has been determined is attached to the thin plate piece. During the transportation process, the size of the membrane piece on the flat plate is determined and a thin plate piece of a size corresponding to the size of the membrane piece is transferred. The present invention is characterized in that the flat plate piece selected from the thin plate piece sorter is guided to the position of the membrane piece whose size has been determined through an extraction mechanism and a transfer mechanism.

〔Example〕

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows an example of an automatic specimen enclosing device to which the thin plate piece sorting and supplying device of the present invention is applied. Here, 100
is a slide glass shooter that supplies slide glasses 110 one by one to a transport device 200 at predetermined time intervals, and the slide glasses 110 supplied from the shutter 100 are transported to the transport device 200.
It is transported from the right to the left in the figure.

300 is a discrimination device, and the slide glass 110 on the conveyance device 200 is first transferred to the discrimination device 30.
0, the size of the specimen (not shown) attached to the top surface is determined. FIG. 2 shows an overview of the discrimination device 300. Here, 310 is a sensor array in which a plurality of photo sensors (not shown) are arranged, and 320 is a printed circuit board to which the sensor group is connected.

The sensor array 310, the printed circuit board 320, and the lens box 330 containing the lens assembly are all fixed above the transport device 200 and set toward the transport path 210 below. 340 is a light projection box provided on the lower surface side of the conveyance path 210, and the light projection box 340 has a slit 341 on the side in contact with the conveyance path 210;
There is a vertical plate 342 at the bottom position directly below 41.
A light shielding member 342 having A and a line filament lamp 343 arranged before and after the vertical plate 342A.
is provided.

Therefore, the slit 34 of this vertical plate 342A
The upper surface 342B facing the lens 1 is finished in black to absorb light and not reflect it. , only this black top surface 342B is visible, and the lamp 34
3 is configured so that it cannot be seen, the light emitted directly upward from each lamp 343 is limited by the light shielding member 342 and the slit 341, as shown by the broken line in the figure. The light is not received by the sensor group of the sensor array 310 via the sensor array 330 .

Therefore, if the slide glass 110 is transported along the transport path 210 and there is no specimen on its upper surface, the sensor array 310 will not be exposed to any light due to the transparency of the glass. is never detected.

However, if specimen pieces 111A and 111B are placed on slide glass 110 as shown in FIG. 3, when slide glass 110 passes over slit 341, these specimen pieces 111A and 111B are attached. Range S
1 and S2 receive the light from the lamp 343 and generate scattered light.

This scattered light is received by the sensor disposed in this part of the sensor array 310 via the lens group, so that the specimen piece 11
The entire range to which the specimen pieces 1A and 111B are attached, that is, the limit length S3 to which the specimen pieces 111A and 111B are attached in the longitudinal direction of the slide glass 110 is detected.

Next, the procedure for determining the size of the specimen 111 will be explained with reference to FIGS. 8A to 8G.

Generally, as shown in FIG. 8, a frosted glass-like frosted portion 121 is provided on one end of a slide glass 110, and a specimen number and the like are written on this frosted portion 121. Therefore, in this example, by scanning and detecting this frost portion 121 with the sensor array 310, the discrimination device 3
00, it can be detected that the lamp 343 is reliably lit. Also,
In the case where the lamp 343 does not have such a frost portion 121, it is possible to detect whether or not there is an abnormality in the lamp 343 by providing a portion at the end to replace the frost portion 121.

8A to 8G show the case where such a frost portion 121 is provided on the slide glass 110. Now, in FIG. 8A, the slide glass 11
0 is conveyed on the conveyance path 210 in the direction of arrow X, and at this time, the slide glass 110 is sequentially scanned using the sensor array 310 shown in FIG. ing.

Here, in this example, there are six scanning lines 311 like this.
However, these scanning lines 311
The larger the number, the higher the resolution of detection in the transport direction.

In FIG. 8A, 123 is the slide glass 11
In this example, this measurement range 123 is equal to the length of the slide glass 110. However, this range 123 is divided into 256-bit detection units, and 2 bits from each bit are detected.
A value signal is input to a memory (not shown).

Of the measurement range 123, the frost portion 121
Assuming that the range 124 excluding the range 124 is the effective measurement range used for actual discrimination, the sensor array 310 passes through the slit 341 while the slide glass is being conveyed in the direction of the arrow Assuming that a signal for each bit is obtained, each scanning line 311A--
The signal data read out at 311F is represented by the waveforms shown in FIGS. 8B to 8F, when the sample part is set to a logic signal "1" and the other parts are set to a logic signal "0".

Therefore, by calculating the logical sum of the waveforms thus obtained within the effective measurement range 124 using the memory and CPU, a waveform as shown in FIG. 8G is obtained. Note that in this example, the sample 111 is 1
Since it is separated into two pulses 11A and 111B, two pulses 125A and 125B are obtained, but the rising edge of pulse 125A and the pulse 125
The length 126 obtained from the falling edge of B is regarded as the size of one sample 111. This detected length 126 can be compared with lengths of a plurality of set types, and a discrimination signal corresponding to the type can be supplied to the thin plate piece sorting and supplying device via a control section to be described later.

Therefore, when the size of the specimen on the slide glass 110 is detected by such a discrimination device 300, the following liquid agent dropping device (hereinafter referred to as a liquid injection device)
400, adhesive liquid is dropped in an amount corresponding to the size of the specimen.

500 is a thin plate sorting and supplying device that supplies cover glass as thin plate pieces. Reference numeral 510 denotes the sorting device, and the sorting device 510 has a sorting section 511 that stores cover glasses in the form of thin plate pieces of a plurality of types, four different sizes in this example, stacked up and down. The extraction mechanism 530 can selectively pull out only one cover glass of a size corresponding to the size of the cover glass. Furthermore,
The pulled-out cover glass is guided by the transfer mechanism 550 onto the slide glass that has finished dropping the adhesive liquid and has been transported 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 a pedestal (not shown) of the bonding device 600, the cover glass is gently dropped from above, and a slight pressing force is applied to complete the bonding and 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.

4 and 5 show details of the thin plate piece sorting and feeding apparatus 500 of the present invention. Here, 501 is a board of the thin plate piece sorting and supplying device 500, and a sorting holder (hereinafter referred to as a sorter) 510 is attached to this board 501.
It can freely reciprocate along the upper rail 502. 51
2 is a rack carved on the top surface of the sorter 510;
513 is a pinion gear operated by a drive motor (not shown), and the motor causes the sorter 510 to reciprocate via the pinion gear 513 and the rack 512.

515A and 515B are each rack 51
These limit switches 515A or 51 are located at either end of the sorter 510.
5B, it is detected that the selector 510 is at the starting position or the ending position, and the motor is stopped.

516A, 516B, 516C and 516D
is a weir plate, and in this example, the size or length is 24
These weir plates 516a, 51 cover glasses in the form of four types of thin plate pieces of mm, 32mm, 40mm and 50mm.
6B, 516C and 516D and surrounding pins 517A, 517B, 51 provided on the back side of these
It is stored in a stacked state between 7C and 517D. 518A, 518B, 5 in Figure 5
18C and 518D show each cover glass housed in this manner. Note that 510A is a groove provided to make it easier to pull up the cover glass 518 from the surface of the sorter 510 when collecting the cover glass 518 from the sorter 510.

Furthermore, these cover glasses 518A, 518
Sorting section 511A, 511B, 511C where B, 518C and 518D are stored by sorting
And parallel grooves 519A, 519B, 519C of the same shape are on the sorter 510 on the lower surface of 511D.
and 519D are provided, and each weir plate 516A,
A cover glass 518A is provided between the bottom surface of 516B, 516C and 516D and the top surface of the sorter 510.
A gap 509 is provided through which only one sheet 518D (thickness and width are the same) can pass through.

520A, 520B, 520C and 520D
519A, 519B, 519C, and 519D are position detection pins arranged on the outside of each sorting section 511 on the center line near the rack 512, and 521 is a limit switch that selects and operates the sorting section 511. It is a selection switch.

The selection switch 521 selects the slide glass 110 that is transported based on the determination made by the discriminator 300.
A selection signal for selecting a suitable cover glass 518 for the upper specimen is supplied to a drive motor (not shown) that drives a pinion gear 513, and the sorter 510 moves via the rack 512, thereby detecting the position detection pins 520A to 520D. Detect. That is, when the selector 510 is driven by the drive motor via the pinion gear 513 and the rack 512 from the starting position detected by the operation of the limit switch 515A, the selection switch 52
1 contact roller 521A with position detection pin 520A
~520D is pin 520D, 520C, 520
B, touch 520A in this order to select the selection switch 521
works. Therefore, depending on the number of operations of the selection switch 521, the position detection pin (that is, the sorting section 5
11A to 511D) can be detected. As a result, when the position detection pin 520 corresponding to the sorting section 511A to 511D in which the selected cover glass 518 is stored comes into contact with the contact roller 521A of the selection switch 521, the drive motor is stopped and the sorter 510 is stopped on the spot. be able to.

Reference numeral 522 denotes an extraction port provided by cutting out the rail 502 on the near side, and this example shows a state in which the sorter 510 is stopped at a position where the cover glass 518D is pulled out. 531 is a suction plate of the extraction mechanism 530 that pulls out the cover glass 518 when the sorter 510 is stopped, and the suction plate 531 is provided with a plurality of suction holes 532. The lowest layer of the cover glasses 518 stored in a stacked state can be sucked through the suction hole 532 using a vacuum pump.

Furthermore, the suction disk 531 has an arm (not shown),
The suction disc 531 is connected to the parallel groove 519 through this arm.
(519D in this example), and can be made to protrude to the transfer position 533 outside the rail 502. 534A and 534B are operated by pins 5311 connected to the arms to move the suction disk 531 to the suction position and to the transfer position 533.
This is a limit switch for positioning.

551 is an arm of the transfer mechanism 550;
It has a suction disc 552 at its tip for reloading. Therefore, the arm 551 is attached to another link member 55.
Together with 1A, they constitute a four-bar mechanism in the form of a parallelogram connected in a circumferential manner, and rotate clockwise around a rotation axis 555 from the state shown to the supply position 533A.

553 is an arm attached to the rotating shaft 555, and has a sliding groove 553A, into which a pin 554A of a rotary plate 554 rotated by a motor (not shown) is slidably fitted. There is. Further, the rotating plate 554 is provided with a notch 554B along its circumference. 556A and 556
B is a limit switch for transfer. For example, when rotating the rotary plate 554 in a clockwise direction, when the notch 554B comes to the limit switch 556A position, the arm 551 and its suction plate 552 move to the transfer position. 533, once the motor is stopped for a predetermined period of time, it is driven again, and then the notch 554B is
When the motor reaches the limit switch 556B position, the arm 551 comes to the supply position 533A, where the motor is similarly stopped for a predetermined period of time and then driven again.

FIG. 6 shows an example of a mechanism for supplying vacuum pressure to the thin plate piece sorting and supplying apparatus of the present invention, where 570 is a vacuum pump for suction, and 571 is a vacuum pump for suction, and 571 is a vacuum pump that is used when the supplied negative pressure is less than a predetermined pressure. 572 is a solenoid valve for the suction plate 531 of the extraction mechanism, and 573 is a solenoid valve for the suction plate 552 of the transfer mechanism.

Furthermore, 531A is an arm that reciprocates the suction disk 531 along the parallel groove 519 shown in FIG. . In Figure 6, the suction plate 5
31 and 552 are both shown in a transfer position 533, and a suction pipe 574 from the suction disk 552 is connected to a solenoid valve 573. In addition,
The suction pipe 574A indicated by the two-dot chain line is the suction disk 552.
The state shown in FIG. 3 is moved to the supply position 553A.

In the vacuum supply mechanism configured in this way,
The vacuum pressure obtained by the vacuum pump 570 is transferred to the solenoid valve 57.
By switching between 2 and 573, vacuum pressure can be supplied to either the suction disc 531 or the suction disc 552 to perform the suction operation. Supplying vacuum pressure to the panel 531, transfer position 53
From the time of the transfer operation using the suction disc 552 in step 3, the vacuum pressure can be controlled to be supplied to the suction disc 552 by switching the valve from the solenoid valve 572 to the solenoid valve 573. Note that other mechanisms in the figure are systems used in the liquid injection device 400 (see FIG. 1), but their explanations will be omitted because they are not particularly relevant to the gist of the present invention.

Next, a series of operations in the thin plate piece sorting and supplying apparatus 500 configured as described above will be explained with reference to FIGS. 7A to 7E. The sorter 51 is operated by the sorter drive motor.
0 starts, the contact rotor 521A of the selection switch 521 has position detection pins 520D, 520C,
520B and 520A come into contact sequentially,
As a result, the sorter 510 is stopped when the position detection pins (520A to 520D) corresponding to the selected sorting section 511 come into contact with the contact roller 521A (the state is shown in FIG. 7A).

At the same time, the suction disk 531 that was waiting at the transfer position 533 is guided to the suction position 533B by the arm 531A being moved by the pin 5311 shown in FIG. 4 connected to the arm 531A until the limit switch 534A is activated. (7th
(see Figure B), the lowest cover glass 518 is suctioned via the vacuum pump 570, and the arm 531A is returned to its original position (i.e., the pin 5
311, the suction disk 531 is returned to the original transfer position 533 (see FIGS. 7C and 7D). At this time, a gap 509 is provided between the weir plate 516 and the upper surface of the sorter 510, allowing only one cover glass 518 to pass through. The group of cover glasses is prevented from being pulled out by a weir plate 516, and when one sheet is pulled out, the group of cover glasses is pulled out by the surrounding pin 517 due to its own weight.
along the sorting section 511 while remaining stacked.

Cover glass 518 up to transfer position 533
When the is transported, the supply of vacuum pressure to the suction plate 531 is stopped, and switching is performed between the solenoid valves 572 and 573 shown in FIG. Vacuum pressure is supplied to the replacement suction disk 552 that is waiting slightly above the position 533. Therefore, the cover glass 518 is now sucked by the suction disc 552 and the arm 551
As shown in FIG. 7E, the slide glass 110 has been moved to the cover glass supply position, that is, the bonding position in this example.
(not shown).

〔effect〕

As described above, according to the present invention, there is provided a discriminating device that detects the size of the attached film piece on the flat plate piece being conveyed and outputs a size discrimination signal, and a plurality of membrane pieces of different sizes. When there is a selection signal from the control section based on the size discrimination signal from the discriminator, the sorting section stores the thin plate pieces of the size corresponding to this signal in a predetermined drawer. A thin plate sorter that can move itself to the desired position and pull out only one of the laminated thin plate pieces from the pull-out position; An extraction mechanism that attracts and pulls out the thin plate piece and moves it to the transfer position, and a thin plate piece guided to the transfer position is sucked and transferred, and is moved to the position of the flat plate piece that has the membrane piece whose size has been determined. Since a transfer function is provided, it is possible to select a thin plate piece of the corresponding size according to the size of the membrane piece on the flat plate piece, pull it out and supply it to the flat plate piece position, and the present invention can be automatically carried out. When applied to a specimen encapsulation device, it becomes possible to automatically select and supply cover glasses according to the size of the specimen, which not only contributes to saving on expensive cover glasses, but also prevents damage to such thin cover glasses. This allows you to align the specimen position on the slide glass with the correct posture without having to worry about it.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a perspective view showing an example of the configuration of an automatic specimen enclosing device to which the thin plate piece sorting and supplying device of the present invention is applied, FIG. The figure is a plan view showing an example of a slide glass to which the sample piece is attached, FIGS.
The figure is a perspective view showing an example of the vacuum supply mechanism.
Figures A to E are explanatory diagrams showing a series of thin plate piece sorting and supplying operations in the thin plate piece sorting and supplying device of the present invention, and Fig. 8A
8 is an explanatory diagram showing the state of scanning by the discriminator, and FIGS. 8B to 8G are waveform diagrams for explaining the procedure for discriminating the size of the specimen, respectively. 100... Shooter, 110... Slide glass, 111A, 111B... Specimen piece, 200...
Transport device, 210...Transport path, 300...Discrimination device, 310...Sensor array, 320...Printed circuit board, 330...Lens box, 340...Light emitter, 341...Slit, 342...Light blocking member,
342A...Vertical plate, 342B...Top surface, 343
... Lamp, 400 ... Liquid injection device, 500 ... Cover glass sorting and supply device, 501 ... Substrate, 50
2...Rail, 509...Gap, 510...Selector, 511, 511A to 511D...Sorting section,
512...Rack, 513...Pinion gear, 5
14... Motor, 515A, 515B... Limit switch, 516, 516A to 516D... Weir plate, 517, 517A to 517D... Surrounding pin,
518, 518A to 518D...Cover glass,
519, 519A to 519D...Parallel groove, 52
0,520A~520D...Position detection pin, 52
1...Selection switch, 521A...Contact roller,
522...extraction port, 530...extraction mechanism, 531
...Suction board, 531A... Arm, 532... Suction hole, 533... Transfer position, 533A... Supply position, 534A, 534B... Limit switch, 550... Transfer mechanism, 551... Arm, 551A... ... Link member, 552 ... Suction plate, 553 ... Arm, 553A ... Sliding groove, 5
54... Rotating plate, 554A... Pin, 554B...
... Notsuchi, 555 ... Rotation axis, 556A, 556
B...Limit switch, 570...Vacuum pump, 571...Vacuum switch, 572,573...
...Solenoid valve, 574,574A...Suction pipe, 600
...Adhesive device, 700...Storage device, 710...
Product reservoir, 730... Extrusion mechanism, 750... Receiver, 800... Control unit, 810... Operation panel, 82
0...Switch box.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A discrimination device that detects the size of the membrane piece attached to the flat plate piece being conveyed and outputs a size discrimination signal, and a discrimination device that stacks and holds multiple thin plate pieces of different sizes. It has a sorting section,
A selection signal based on a size discrimination signal from the discrimination device moves the sorting section holding the thin plate pieces of the size corresponding to the selection signal to a predetermined drawer position, and the sorting section is moved at the predetermined drawer position. a thin plate sorter that is capable of pulling out only one of the plurality of thin plate pieces stacked in the stack; An extraction mechanism moves the thin plate piece to a predetermined transfer position, and a transfer operation is performed by adsorbing the thin plate piece guided to the transfer position, and the thin plate piece is attached to the membrane piece whose size has been determined. and a transfer mechanism that moves the membrane piece to the position of the flat plate, and in the process of conveyance, the size of the membrane piece on the flat plate is determined, and a transfer mechanism of a size corresponding to the size of the membrane piece is determined. A thin plate piece is selected from the thin plate piece sorter and guided to the position of the flat plate piece where the size of the membrane piece has been determined via the extraction mechanism and the transfer mechanism. Thin plate sorting and feeding device.