Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1 Applications of the VideoScan platform. The highly versatile VideoScan platform covers
microbead assays, cell pattern analysis, and assays in solution, with varying degree of features per
application. Assays in solution include standard fluorescence read-out or (real-time) PCR. Cell
pattern recognition is used for high-content screening in autoimmune diagnostics but also bacteria
detection and enumeration. The main applications of the VideoScan technology are microbead
assays for diverse analytes (DNA, peptides, proteins) both as endpoint analysis and in real time
In general these platforms only allow minor variations in the experimental setup
because of pre-manufactured reagents optimized for a limited number of appli-
cations. Usually these technologies are highly priced and the necessary consum-
ables are often quite expensive. On the other hand bioanalytical demands vary
quite frequently depending on the subject studied. Within a project it might be
necessary to perform measurements ranging from enzymatic assays, nucleic acid
amplification and hybridization to antigen/antibody detection. Providing the
equipment for all these different tasks might be fairly expensive and will require a
lot of space in the laboratory.
Here we describe a microscope-based technology, designated VideoScan,
which provides the user with a high degree of freedom to adapt the system to the
specific requirements of the experimental conditions, including kinetics (Fig.
1
).
It uses standard commercial hardware components together with a modular soft-
ware package. It is possible to identify and quantify biomolecules in solution or
attached to microbeads, and assay temperatures are variable and precisely con-
trollable within one experiment using the heating/cooling unit. On the other hand,
the image processing capabilities enlarge the spectrum of applications allowing
high-content screening of autoimmune antibodies on immobilized cells.
We describe a combined approach which can be used for the analysis of cell
patterns [
1
], microbead-based assays [
2
,
3
] and in solution.
