Rapid Examination of Nonprocessed Renal Cell Carcinoma Using Nonlinear Microscopy.

Context.—: Histology, the traditional method of examining surgical tissue under a microscope, is a time-consuming process involving the fixation of tissue in formalin, dehydration, embedding in paraffin, and cutting into thin sections for hematoxylin-eosin (H&E) staining. Frozen section analysis is a faster alternative used in surgery to quickly evaluate tissue, but it has limitations, such as the size of the specimens that can be analyzed and difficulties with fatty and bony tissues.

Objective.—: To rapidly examine nonprocessed kidney tumors using nonlinear microscopy (NLM), a fluorescence microscopy technique that can rapidly visualize fresh or fixed, rapidly stained, nonprocessed tissue resembling H&E histology. This technology eliminates the need for fixation, embedding, microtome sectioning, or slide preparation.

Design.—: In this study, a total of 190 tissue specimens were collected from 46 patients who underwent partial or radical nephrectomy.

Results.—: Two genitourinary pathologists confirmed that diagnostically important features present in the H&E images could also be identified in the NLM images.

Conclusions.—: The results of this study demonstrated that NLM had a high degree of correspondence with H&E staining for the classical variants of renal cell carcinoma. NLM offers several clinical benefits, such as facilitating rapid renal cell carcinoma diagnosis, assessment of targeted kidney biopsies for both tumor and medical kidney diseases, and collection of fresh renal cell carcinoma tissue for molecular studies.