Classification and application of histological slicing machines

There are many types of slicers, including medicinal slicers, equipment slicers, food slicers, tissue slicers, and so on.

The tissue slicer is mainly a device used for pathological analysis of human tissues, animal and plant tissues.

Tissue slicers are generally divided into rotary slicers and frozen slicers

Rotary slicer:

It is a slicing action performed by rotating the hand operated rocking wheel. The wax block table is embedded in a metal clamp seat that can move up and down in the groove, and the flat slices are cut by pushing forward with a micro screw. Some rotary slicers have three knobs and a fastening knob installed on their heads to deflect and tighten them in various directions, making it easy to adjust the cutting surface of the wax block. The cutting angle of the slicer can be adjusted (the slicer is tilted). Due to the use of a heavy and large slicing knife on this type of slicing machine, vibration generally does not occur when cutting hard tissue. The thickness of the slice can be adjusted to any thickness from 1 to 30 microns using a knob, with each gradient being 1 or 2 microns.

The advantage of a rotary slicer is that the body is relatively heavy, so the shaking slicer is stable and very suitable for cutting paraffin sections. It can ideal for cutting continuous sections and also for cutting large tissue blocks.

Frozen slicer:

It is a technical method of using physical cooling to freeze fresh tissue samples to produce a certain hardness for slicing. Compared with paraffin sections, frozen sections do not require dehydration and embedding, resulting in faster production speed. They are a good method for providing pathological diagnosis for clinicians undergoing surgery. In addition, as frozen sections of fresh tissue are not fixed, frozen sections are also an ideal preparation method for fat staining, enzyme histochemical staining, as well as some immunohistochemical staining and in situ molecular hybridization. The disadvantage of frozen sections is that the morphology of tissue cells is slightly inferior to that of paraffin sections.

It is widely used in hospitals, medical schools, forensic medicine, life sciences, health and epidemic prevention, public security forensic medicine, agricultural colleges, research institutions and other units to produce pathological and biological tissue sections, and animal and plant research units for pathological diagnosis, analysis, and research.

Slicers are used for optical microscopes, including rotary and sliding slicers. There are ultra-thin slicers used for electron microscopes, which use glass or diamond knives to make ultra-thin slices. The material devices include mechanical propulsion and thermal expansion. There are frozen slicing machines, low-temperature constant temperature slicing machines, and frozen ultra-thin slicing machines used for the frozen slicing method. A cylindrical slicer is used for hand slicing.

Basic types of slicers (according to their structure):

1. Shake slicer

2. Rotary slicer

3. Sliding slicer

4. Pushing (sled type) slicer

5. The most commonly used frozen slicer is a rotary slicer