CREATING THE RIGHT SPIRIT

TissueGnostics is an innovative enterprise on the cutting edge of science and technology our activities are guided by economic principles. We provide our customers with a new generation of imaging and analysis tools for basic and clinical research.

We offer objectivity, quality and innovation and continuously demand it from ourselves. Through const professional development, We maintain top-level scientific standards and competence by constantly reviewing and improving our processes, both scientific and business.

Hallmarks of our work include creativity, commitment and mutual understanding at all levels of operation. We make sure that our staff members enjoy a pleasant working environment that brings out their best performance.

EXCHANGING THOUGHTS

Everyday communication is about people exchanging ideas. We promote sincere communication in an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect to further creativity, satisfaction and social competence.

We are closely cooperating with clinicians and research facilities to ensure that our development work will always be customer-oriented. Custom requests and needs expressed by individuals are being incorporated to gear our products for a broad spectrum of challenges.

JOINING FORCES

We are making every effort to promote a sense of community enabling us to act as a team.

Our daily interactions are guided by mutual respect and pervaded by a peer-to-peer spirit. We strongly believe that social competence should not be a hollow phrase. Therefore we practice what we preach.

Our efforts are supported by solid training, continuous professional development, setting targets, and being responsible individuals. We cannot accept poor working conditions.

IF Dots App: Analysis of FISH

Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) has been routinely used for decades in research and clinics to rapidly identify potential genetical changes within cells. This case study shows how TissueGnostics’ image analysis solution StrataQuest can be applied to evaluate FISH stainings. The most streamlined solution, the IF Dots App (runs within StrataQuest), can be applied to any analysis of dot-sized objects within the nuclei. Depending on the research needs, the following analysis can be combined with any other kind of analysis including AI-based tissue classification, phenotyping, spatial analysis, etc.

The aim of the following case study was to (i) identify individual nuclei and (ii) to assess how many FISH dots per individual nuclei are present.

The image below shows an overview of a triple staining: the nucleus stained by DAPI (blue), and two FISH markers, the housekeeping gene (green), and HER2/neu (red).

IF Dots original 95

The automated analysis starts with nuclei segmentation (a), where nuclei are identified by the intensity of the DAPI staining (nuclei are marked by the green outline). In the next step, the FISH dots are detected: in red the housekeeping gene in FITC channel (b) and in yellow for the HER2/neu in Acridine channel (c). Then these masks can be combined, as seen in (d).

IF Dots min

For further visualization of the analysis results, StrataQuest outputs the data in scattergrams. In the example below, the number of Acridine dots per nucleus (y-axis) is plotted against the FITC dots per nucleus (x-axis). The identified nuclei were gated for the condition “2 acridine dots per nuclei”, where the number of FITC dots can vary, and selected cells are shown in red contour via backward connection. Scattergrams showing the number of detected nuclei with each dot number combination are useful, especially with the Heat Map function enabled (bottom) which indicates those groups with a higher quantity of nuclei. To gain quantitative data for statistical analysis, the results can be immediately exported to Excel, CSV, and PDF formats.

IF Dots 2 min

FISH analysis is only one example of StrataQuest´s capabilities. If you are interested in how StrataQuest streamlined image analysis solution can enhance your research today, please reach out to a TissueGnostics team member for a demonstration.

Get to know more about FISH applications combined with TissueGnostics solutions in our blog posts:

HISTORY

TissueGnostics was established in 2003 in Austria after nearly a decade of basic research. The goal was to supply scientists with qualitative and observer independent results for cell and tissue analysis in tissue context and this in automated format and significantly less time. Katja Österreicher, Georg Steiner and Dr. Rupert Ecker, the three co-founders of the company, with the aid of a dozen of development partners (Medical University Vienna, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center New York, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Cancer Research, Vienna; Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle; Brighamand Women`s Hospital, Boston; etc.) succeeded in reaching this target by 2005.

The product launch of TissueFAXS 1.0 was in 2006 and provided tissue imaging and automated identification and functional characterization of single cells in tissue sections. In contrast to morphometry, which provides values referring to the metric dimensions of cells, the term “tissue cytometry” refers to quantification of molecular parameters. Though methodically different, tissue cytometry exhibits a functional similarity to flow cytometry. While flow cytometer is restricted to cells in suspension (e.g. blood) and cannot be applied to solid tissue, tissue cytometry refers to the cytometric analysis (as opposed to morphometric analysis) of histological sections. TissueGnostics has been the first manufacturer of tissue cytometers offering a flow cytometry-like workflow (but applied to tissue sections).

Today in 2022 TissueGnostics is a successfull company with subsidiaries in the EU, the USA and China and with customers on all continents.