Fig. 1

Thumbnail gallery of analysed CTCs. Representative fluorescence images of a CTC (top row) and a CTC cluster (bottom row) isolated from the peripheral blood of a patient with pancreatic cancer. (Left column) Hoechst stain (blue) identifies nuclei; (second column) EpCAM-MCAM (green) identifies membranes of CTCs; (third column) CD45 (red) identifies leucocytes; (right column) superimposed images confirms intact cells. Images were acquired with 20× magnification. To enhance visibility, we adjusted the brightness and contrast equally for all microscopic images, and these adjustments were applied to the entire image