New kind of blood smear? DIC
Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2022 8:30 pm
I got some slide in today that I purchased online. They are sets from a German manufacturer. I suspect they are targeted to high school students. I purchased 4 sets which consisted of 40 slides.
The quality ranged from breathtaking, to garbage.
The blood smear was almost impossible to focus on, even using phase contrast.
What was really puzzling was instead of a tradition smear it had a small microtome type looking section on the slide under the coverslip. Is this some new "smear" technique???
https://www.flickr.com/photos/196001110 ... ed-public/
It had no stain and for some reason DIC would almost provide no help at all in enhancing contrast. I suspect their mounting medium is WAY out of what most people would consider tolerance for the refraction index. (The RI of the medium and the tissue are so close that there is nothing for the DIC system to differentiate.)
Once again I was questioning my microscope but when I went to a diatom slide from the same manufacturer, I could get a dark field background with 40X DIC.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/196001110 ... ed-public/
With a tissue sample again from the same manufacturer it was a more than acceptable slide but DIC didn't seem to work at all.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/196001110 ... ed-public/
This picture was shot with the exact same DIC settings as the diatom. (note the white areas where there is no tissue that should be almost black)
I suspect they are using different mounting medium and different processes for their commercial sets than they use for their university customers.
The Spermatozoa smear slide that came in the set must have come from someone who had a vasectomy or was born a woman and identifies as "male".
With the price of commercially prepared slides and with the extreme variation in quality that I am seeing, even within the same provider, I think it would be beneficial to the community if we started posting reviews of slides. At least the good ones. Even at that, there is no guarantee that a slide made well last month will be made well today. Curse you back office cost cutting accountants!
I have some Ward's slides that are great and that I would recommend but they have changed their numbering system and I don't know if a slide with the same general description would be the same slide today.
Well made prepared microscope slides are breathtaking to look and a treasure of knowledge but buying three or four to get one good on is getting a bit expensive.
Saddly, we will never know how many young people will sour on the hobby because of bad slides. They will just assume it is their lack of skill or that it takes an extremely expensive microscope to see anything worth while.
The quality ranged from breathtaking, to garbage.
The blood smear was almost impossible to focus on, even using phase contrast.
What was really puzzling was instead of a tradition smear it had a small microtome type looking section on the slide under the coverslip. Is this some new "smear" technique???
https://www.flickr.com/photos/196001110 ... ed-public/
It had no stain and for some reason DIC would almost provide no help at all in enhancing contrast. I suspect their mounting medium is WAY out of what most people would consider tolerance for the refraction index. (The RI of the medium and the tissue are so close that there is nothing for the DIC system to differentiate.)
Once again I was questioning my microscope but when I went to a diatom slide from the same manufacturer, I could get a dark field background with 40X DIC.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/196001110 ... ed-public/
With a tissue sample again from the same manufacturer it was a more than acceptable slide but DIC didn't seem to work at all.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/196001110 ... ed-public/
This picture was shot with the exact same DIC settings as the diatom. (note the white areas where there is no tissue that should be almost black)
I suspect they are using different mounting medium and different processes for their commercial sets than they use for their university customers.
The Spermatozoa smear slide that came in the set must have come from someone who had a vasectomy or was born a woman and identifies as "male".
With the price of commercially prepared slides and with the extreme variation in quality that I am seeing, even within the same provider, I think it would be beneficial to the community if we started posting reviews of slides. At least the good ones. Even at that, there is no guarantee that a slide made well last month will be made well today. Curse you back office cost cutting accountants!
I have some Ward's slides that are great and that I would recommend but they have changed their numbering system and I don't know if a slide with the same general description would be the same slide today.
Well made prepared microscope slides are breathtaking to look and a treasure of knowledge but buying three or four to get one good on is getting a bit expensive.
Saddly, we will never know how many young people will sour on the hobby because of bad slides. They will just assume it is their lack of skill or that it takes an extremely expensive microscope to see anything worth while.