# Unstained and paired microscopy images

**URL:** <https://discourse.canceridc.dev/t/unstained-and-paired-microscopy-images/705>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [March 21, 2025, 7:46pm UTC](https://discourse.canceridc.dev/t/unstained-and-paired-microscopy-images/705 "2025-03-21T19:46:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dzenanz](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.canceridc.dev/dzenanz/32/276_2.png) [@dzenanz](https://discourse.canceridc.dev/u/dzenanz)\
**Post date:** [March 21, 2025, 7:46pm UTC](https://discourse.canceridc.dev/t/unstained-and-paired-microscopy-images/705/1 "2025-03-21T19:46:12Z")

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I wonder whether IDC Slide Microscopy images contain any images of unstained tissues? And how to identify them? Are there any examples of stained/unstained image pairs? Paired images would ideally be co-registered, but any examples are great, even if I have to register them myself.

Does metadata contain information whether a particular stain is fluorescent or not? Or is that left to the users to decide/discover?

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**Author:** ![dclunie](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.canceridc.dev/dclunie/32/174_2.png) [@dclunie](https://discourse.canceridc.dev/u/dclunie)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 12:00pm UTC](https://discourse.canceridc.dev/t/unstained-and-paired-microscopy-images/705/2 "2025-03-22T12:00:46Z")

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The short answer is no, I don’t think we have any unstained tissue images at all, much less paired with stained images.

Wrt. what stains are used, this might be helpful [IDC Tutorial: Getting started on working with slide microscopy data in IDC](https://colab.research.google.com/github/ImagingDataCommons/IDC-Tutorials/blob/master/notebooks/pathomics/getting_started_with_digital_pathology.ipynb/).

For fluorescence rather than brightfield, the relevant DICOM attribute is IlluminationTypeCodeSequence, which will typically have coded values of either (111744, DCM, “Brightfield illumination”) or (111743, DCM, “Epifluorescence illumination”). We don’t have many of the latter yet.

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**Author:** ![dzenanz](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.canceridc.dev/dzenanz/32/276_2.png) [@dzenanz](https://discourse.canceridc.dev/u/dzenanz)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2025, 12:54pm UTC](https://discourse.canceridc.dev/t/unstained-and-paired-microscopy-images/705/3 "2025-03-22T12:54:20Z")

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Filtering by metadata, I was afraid this was the case. Thank you for confirming it.

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**Author:** ![fedorov](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.canceridc.dev/fedorov/32/3_2.png) [@fedorov](https://discourse.canceridc.dev/u/fedorov)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 1:14pm UTC](https://discourse.canceridc.dev/t/unstained-and-paired-microscopy-images/705/4 "2025-04-04T13:14:54Z")

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> [@dclunie](#):
>
> Wrt. what stains are used, this might be helpful [IDC Tutorial: Getting started on working with slide microscopy data in IDC](https://colab.research.google.com/github/ImagingDataCommons/IDC-Tutorials/blob/master/notebooks/pathomics/getting_started_with_digital_pathology.ipynb/).

We also have this Looker dashboard where you can filter by stain without writing any code: [IDC Slide Microscopy dashboard](https://lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/e4795618-80ad-4cfe-a668-89a8090d560b/page/NM1rD).

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**Author:** ![dzenanz](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.canceridc.dev/dzenanz/32/276_2.png) [@dzenanz](https://discourse.canceridc.dev/u/dzenanz)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2025, 1:27pm UTC](https://discourse.canceridc.dev/t/unstained-and-paired-microscopy-images/705/5 "2025-04-04T13:27:45Z")

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I have seen and used it - thank you.