Slides created from a TMA block have small fragments of many different tissues coming from different patients, all of which may be processed at the same time, under the same conditions by a desired technique. These are typically utilized in research. See Figure NN.4-5. Tissue items (spots) on the TMA slide come from different tissue items (cores) in TMA blocks (from different donor blocks, different parts and different patients).

Each Specimen (spot) must have its own ID. The specimens may be localized, for example, by X-Y coordinates, or by a textual column-row identifier for the spot (e.g., "E3" for fifth column, third row).

If the TMA slide is imaged as a whole, e.g., at low resolution as an index, it must be given a "pseudo-patient" identifier (since it does not relate to a single patient). Images created for each spot should be assigned to the real patients.