On Sept. 8, 2006, BD (Becton, Dickinson) announced an agreement to acquire the 93.5% of the outstanding shares of TriPath Imaging which BD did not own, for a cash purchase price of $9.25 per share, or approximately $350 million.

In 1999, NeoPath merged with AutoCyte to form TriPath Imaging based in Burlington, N.C. NeoPath was a university of Washington spin-off co-founded by Gordon Kuenster, that made the AutoPap automated screening system for cervical cancer, and AutoCyte developed a system that produced slides with a thin layer of cervical cells, an alternative approach to the standard Pap smear.