Fig. 6: The MCAS pipeline overview.

a, b The MCAS data acquisition (a) 48 cameras capture unique FOVs. A 7 × 7 lateral scan is performed to fill FOV gaps with a 0.3 NA lens. b Axial scanning addresses the volume of thick samples. The plot shows the 3D data acquisition time per lens and a number of focal stacks. c Identifies the sharpest focus plane in each stack using a contrast metric. d In-focus planes from (c) are stitched together: first, 7 × 7 scanned images from each camera, utilizing a 0.3 NA lens, are merged, then combined into a final composite after appropriate padding. Red boxes in (c) and (d) indicate FOVs where the contrast measurement failed due to the absence of distinctive sample features. The MCAS pipeline is consistent, differing only in the number of scans when utilizing a 0.5 NA lens.