Use of Autostitch for automatic stitching of microscope images

Image stitching is the process of combining multiple images to produce a panorama or larger image. In many biomedical studies, including those of cancer and infection, the use of this approach is highly desirable in order to acquire large areas of certain structures or whole sections, while retaining microscopic resolution. In this study, we describe the application of Autostitch, viz. software that is normally used for the generation of panoramas in photography, in the seamless stitching of microscope images. First, we tested this software on image sets manually acquired by normal light microscopy and compared the performance with a manual stitching approach performed with Paint Shop Pro. Secondly, this software was applied to an image stack acquired by an automatic microscope. The stitching results were then compared with that generated by a self-programmed rectangular tiling macro integrated in Image J. Thirdly, this program was applied in the image stitching of images from electron microscopy. Thus, the automatic stitching program described here may find applications in convenient image stitching and virtual microscopy in the biomedical research.