The field number of the objective lens limits the field of view in a conventional compound microscope; even at very low magnification, the microscope does not allow observation of large pieces of specimen at once. This made the observation of organs and large pieces of tissue sections inconvenient. in the course of studying the development of maize stem, we encountered the need of digitizing large hand sections for 3D reconstruction. Splicing a series of images that are taken at different positions to form a montage is not acceptable, because the jointed image suffers from mismatch due to lens distortion. Considering the resolution needed in our study, one alternative is to use a consumer flatbed scanner designed for a personal computer. in order to adapt the conventional scanner for wet tissue scanning, an Acer 620TPC flatbed scanner, equipped with a trans-illuminator, was modified (FIG 1).