Microwave Processing of Archived Pathology Specimens for Ultrastructural Examination

Microwave (MW)-assisted processing has been shown to provide a considerable number of advantages for microscopic and ultrastructural examination of a wide variety of biological specimens, including increased antibody labeling on cryoultramicrotome sections (Chicoine and Webster, 1998 ), reduced processing times (Giberson et al., 1995 ), better retention of some ultrastructural features in animal tissues (Giberson et al., 1997 ), increased protein antigenicity (Lonsdale et al., 1999 ), rapid decalcification of bony tissues (Madden and Henson, 1997 ), increased immunocytochemical reactions (Madden, 1998 ), and increased enzyme activity (Rassner et al., 1997 ). Taken together, all of these benefits of MW-assisted processing provide additional evidence that many types of specimens can be rapidly processed without compromising microscopic or ultrastructural features.