Description of Business	3 Months Ended
Mar. 31, 2021
Accounting Policies [Abstract]
Description of Business	Description of the BusinessNanoString Technologies, Inc. (the “Company”) was incorporated in the state of Delaware on June 20, 2003. The Company’s headquarters is located in Seattle, Washington. The Company’s proprietary optical barcoding chemistry enables direct detection, identification, and quantification of individual target molecules in a biological sample by attaching a unique color coded fluorescent reporter to each target molecule of interest. The Company currently markets and sells two platforms based on its proprietary technology, its nCounter Analysis System, and its GeoMx Digital Spatial Profiler, or GeoMx DSP system, both consisting of instruments and consumables, to academic, government, biopharmaceutical, and clinical laboratory customers.

The entire disclosure for the business description and basis of presentation concepts. Business description describes the nature and type of organization including but not limited to organizational structure as may be applicable to holding companies, parent and subsidiary relationships, business divisions, business units, business segments, affiliates and information about significant ownership of the reporting entity. Basis of presentation describes the underlying basis used to prepare the financial statements (for example, US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, Other Comprehensive Basis of Accounting, IFRS).

Reference 1: http://fasb.org/us-gaap/role/ref/legacyRef
-Publisher FASB
-Name Accounting Standards Codification
-Topic 235
-URI http://asc.fasb.org/topic&trid=2122369

Reference 2: http://fasb.org/us-gaap/role/ref/legacyRef
-Publisher FASB
-Name Accounting Standards Codification
-Topic 205
-URI http://asc.fasb.org/topic&trid=2122149

Reference 3: http://fasb.org/us-gaap/role/ref/legacyRef
-Publisher FASB
-Name Accounting Standards Codification
-Topic 275
-URI http://asc.fasb.org/topic&trid=2134479

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