Profile of an "at cutting edge" pathology laboratory for pathological human deposits: from nanometer to in vivo scale analysis on large scale facilities

This contribution aims to define an analysis procedure for abnormal deposits in human tis-sues starting from in vivo characterization, down to the nanoscale using major instrumentation. Such an integrated approach is based on recent literature, but particularly on our research over the last twenty years on pathological calcifications. To this end, we begin by describing four successive ana-lytical steps, on the injury site or physician's surgery, at the hospital, at a typical physicochemical lab-oratory, and finally at a large scale (possibly multinational) facility. For the first step, we present var-ious techniques which can be implemented on portable instruments. For the second step, commer-cial analytical setups are used. In a physicochemical laboratory, prototype or commercial setups are used and finally on large scale instruments, characterization techniques with better spatial resolution and/or higher sensitivity or techniques specific to synchrotron radiation are employed.