Available Technology
High throughput detection using an integrated lens array
Technology:
Biological measuring instrument. Arrayed confocal detection (scanning microscopy using Fresnel Zone Plates)
Markets Addressed
Measuring biological data is challenging: there are hundreds and thousands of variables, the specimens are suspended in fluid, massive data sets are required, the specimens are sensitive, and the measurements should be done quickly and in parallel. Efficient health diagnoses, drug discoveries, biomedical research, and bioscientific research depend on measuring instruments that can meet all these challenges.
Drs. Abate, Crozier, Schonbrun, and Weitz developed an entirely new technology that meets all these challenges, and is relatively inexpensive to make. This new biological measuring instrument significantly exceeds the capabilities of existing instruments, such as capillary array electrophoresis, flow cytometry, and micro-array scanners. An optical detection system, built of hundreds and thousands of confocal microscopes, is integrated with a parallel microfluidic drop maker. The combined instrument delivers large numbers of samples to discrete detection regions to improve detection throughput rates by an order of magnitude faster than flow cytometry, currently the fastest commonly used technique. With this increase in speed and parallelism, massive data sets can be analyzed faster, more effectively, and less expensively, making this instrument a cheap tool for enhanced high throughput screening.
Innovations and Advantages
Dr. Crozier’s team developed a diffractive lens array (that is, the collection of confocal microscopes) that performs massively parallel fluorescent measurements. The diffractive lens array uses a high light collection efficiency to expand the sample area well beyond a standard microscope’s small field of view. The large sample area increases the number and speed of simultaneous measurements to thousands of cycles per second, and better. The diffractive lens array runs simultaneously with a single microfluidic chip. Researchers could run multiple integrated systems together to further increase the sample rate.
Both the diffractive lens array and the microfluidic device are made using soft lithography, which makes this optical system simple and inexpensive to make; the only expensive parts are the laser and the sensor array.
Additional Information
Intellectual Property Status: Patent(s) pending
Part of an imaging and microscopy portfolio, consisting of HU3468, HU3504 and HU4250.
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Inventor(s):
Abate, Adam R.
Crozier, Kenneth B.
Schonbrun, Ethan
Weitz, David A.
Categories:
For further information, please contact:
Sam Liss, Director of Business Development
(617) 495-4371
Reference Harvard Case #3504