Figure 1.

An illustration of the TMA technology (the left half of the image was taken from [65]). Small tissue cores are first extracted from tumor blocks, and stored in archives which are frozen or preserved with formalin. Then thin slices of tissues are sectioned from the tissue core. A tissue slide is formed by an array of hundreds of tissue sections (possibly from different patients). Biomarkers are then applied to the tissue sections (which then typically show darker colors). A TMA image is then captured for each tissue section from a high-resolution microscope.