Deep-ultraviolet microscopy for analysis of bone marrow aspirate adequacy

Abstract

Bone marrow aspiration procedures play an important role in the assessment of patients with blood and marrow diseases, including cancers. Evaluating the adequacy of aspirates, indicated by the presence of bony spicules, is crucial to ensure the procedural success and collection of relevant diagnostic material. Unfortunately, inadequate samples occur in approximately 50 % of cases, requiring patients to undergo repeat procedures. This is particularly problematic for pediatric patients who need to be anesthetized before each procedure. The current gold standard is hematopathologist examination of Giemsa-stained slides, which is time consuming and requires expensive biochemical reagents and trained technicians. Recently, Here we present a portable, LED-based UV microscope designed for real-time inspection of bone marrow aspirates. We discuss results from a clinical trial with pediatric oncology patients demonstrating excellent agreement between UV examination of unstained slides and ground truth pathologist examination of stained slides. Furthermore, we demonstrate whole slide imaging using a previously developed, compact UV microscopy system and automated spicule detection with deep neural networks to work towards point-of-care applications.