# Rapid 3D Whole-Slide Digitization of Thick Cytopathology Slides with a Gigapixel Microscope > **NIH NIH R44** · RAMONA OPTICS, INC. · 2021 · $1,000,000 ## Abstract Significance: Digital microscopes are becoming an indispensable tool within the pathology lab. Whole-slide microscope scanners are now routinely used to record gigapixel-sized images of surgical pathology specimens for archival, sharing, annotation and automated processing. Unfortunately, whole-slide scanners still cannot efficiently digitize thick specimens, such as fine-needle aspirates (FNAs) and other cytology samples that are commonly used as the first-line modality for diagnosing cancer of the lung, thyroid, pancreas and other sites. Standard microscope lenses can only capture data from a 1 mm2 area per snapshot. Given this limitation, it is currently not technically feasible to fully scan out an entire slide in 3D, which leads to a number of critical bottlenecks within the cytologist's workflow for cancer diagnosis. Proposal: Ramona Optics is developing a new micro-camera array microscope (MCAM) that can overcome these limitations to digitize thick specimens (up to 50 µm deep) at 1 µm3 volumetric resolution across an entire slide. The resulting multi-gigabyte recording can then be examined by cytopathologists via a custom-developed 3D software interface to aid with various diagnostic tasks. In Phase I of this Fast-Track proposal, Ramona will finalize the hardware and software for its new MCAM-3D device. In Phase II, Ramona will collaborate with the Duke University Medical Center and several other cytopathologists to test and measure MCAM-3D performance on several relevant clinical tasks, including remote telecytology-based assessment of FNA sample adequacy, as well as suitability for secondary diagnosis. Apart from improving workflow and patient care in the hospital, Ramona Optics also expects the MCAM- 3D to enable a number of critical high-throughput imaging experiments in the life sciences that are currently not possible due to the limited throughput of current standard microscope designs. SA1 (Phase I): Integrate hardware and software for whole-slide MCAM-3D capture: Ramona will complete development of an MCAM-3D device that digitizes whole slides (12 cm2 area, 50 µm thick) at 0.8 and 2.6 µm/pixel lateral and axial resolution within 1.5 minutes. 3D viewing software will enable real-time interaction with the multi-gigabyte recorded data volume, offering ~50X more measurements than current 2D whole-slide scanners. SA2 (Phase II): Evaluate MCAM-3D for telecytology and improve system specifications: In collaboration with 3 cytopathologists at the Duke University Medical Center, Ramona will test the MCAM-3D for remote rapid on-site evaluation (ROSE) of sample adequacy. ROSE is well-known to improve patient care by reducing repeat procedures. The objective of this aim is to show that the MCAM-3D can make ROSE easier, quicker and potentially more accurate. At the same time, Ramona will incorporate study findings to improve lateral/axial imaging resolution to 0.5 µm/1 µm and scanning speed to 30 sec. SA3 (Phase II): 3D whole-slide digitizat... ## Key facts - **NIH application ID:** 10465303 - **Project number:** 4R44CA250877-02 - **Recipient organization:** RAMONA OPTICS, INC. - **Principal Investigator:** Mark Harfouche - **Activity code:** R44 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.) - **Funding institute:** NIH - **Fiscal year:** 2021 - **Award amount:** $1,000,000 - **Award type:** 4N - **Project period:** 2021-09-01 → 2023-08-31 ## Primary source NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10465303 ## Citation > US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10465303, Rapid 3D Whole-Slide Digitization of Thick Cytopathology Slides with a Gigapixel Microscope (4R44CA250877-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10465303. Licensed CC0. --- *[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*