470 results about "Cell counting" patented technology

The present invention provides a device and methods of use thereof in microscale cell sorting. This invention provides sorting cytometers, which trap individual cells within vessels following exposure to dielectrophoresis, allow for the assaying of trapped cells, such that a population is identified whose isolation is desired, and their isolation.

A method and device are provided for counting cells in a sample of living tissue, such as an embryo. The method involves obtaining a microscopic image of the unstained tissue that reveals cell boundaries, such as a differential interference contrast (DIC) image, and an optical quadrature microscopy (OQM) image which is used to prepare an image of optical path length deviation (OPD) across the cell cluster. The boundaries of individual cells in the cell cluster are modeled as ellipses and used, together with the maximum optical path length deviation of a cell, to calculate ellipsoidal model cells that are subtracted from the OPD image. The process is repeated until the OPD image is depleted of phase signal attributable to cells of the cell cluster, and the cell count is obtained from the number of cells subtracted. The method is capable of accurately and non-invasively counting the number of cells in a living embryo at the 2-30 cell stage, and can be employed to assess the developmental stage and health of human embryos for fertility treatments.

The present invention generally relates to systems and methods for counting biomolecules or cells. In certain embodiments, the invention provides a cell counting or biomolecule counting system including: a covered chamber having a known height and configured to hold a suspension of biomolecules or cells in a sample; at least one fluorescent light source connected to at least one fluorescent light beam narrowing device; a bright-field light source connected to a bright-field light beam narrowing device; a microscope objective; a detection device; a fluorescent filter assembly to allow only excitation light to illuminate the sample and allow only emission light from the sample to be imaged by the detection device; and a movable light shutter to block bright-field light during fluorescent detection.

The enumeration of cells in fluids by flow cytometry is widely used across many disciplines such as assessment of leukocyte subsets in different bodily fluids or of bacterial contamination in environmental samples, food products and bodily fluids. For many applications the cost, size and complexity of the instruments prevents wider use, for example, CD4 analysis in HIV monitoring in resource-poor countries. The novel device, methods and algorithms disclosed herein largely overcome these limitations. Briefly, all cells in a biological sample are fluorescently labeled, but only the target cells are also magnetically labeled. In addition, non-magnetically labeled cells are imaged for viability in a modified slide configuration. The labeled sample, in a chamber or cuvet, is placed between two wedge-shaped magnets to selectively move the magnetically labeled cells to the observation surface of the cuvet. An LED illuminates the cells and a CCD camera captures the images of the fluorescent light emitted by the target cells. Image analysis performed with a novel algorithm provides a count of the cells on the surface that can be related to the target cell concentration of the original sample. The compact cytometer system provides a rugged, affordable and easy-to-use technique, which can be used in remote locations.

This invention is directed to a method for preparation of a biological sample for measurement of protein epitopes that allows for the preservation of intracellular protein epitopes and detection of signal transduction pathways based on the ability to capture transient activation states of the epitopes. The method provided by the invention allows for the rapid fixation of biological samples containing red blood cells, to ensure that epitopes of signal transduction molecules and other intracellular protein epitopes are preserved in the active state. The method of the invention further allows for lysis of red blood cells, thereby making it a useful method for cytometric analysis of biological samples, including, for example, whole blood, bone marrow aspirates, peritoneal fluids, and other red blood cell containing samples. The invention also provides a method to recover or “unmask” epitopes on intracellular antigens that have been made inaccessible by the cross linking fixative necessary to fix the sample. Significantly, the methods of the invention allow preservation and analysis of phospho-epitope levels in biological samples taken directly from patients to determine disease-specific characteristics.

Optical disk-based assay devices and methods are described, in which analyte-specific signal elements are disposed on an optical disk substrate. In preferred embodiments, the analyte-specific signal elements are disposed readably with the disk's tracking features. Also described are cleavable signal elements particularly suitable for use in the assay device and methods. Binding of the chosen analyte simultaneously to a first and a second analyte-specific side member of the cleavable signal element tethers the signal-responsive moiety to the signal element's substrate-attaching end, despite subsequent cleavage at the cleavage site that lies intermediate the first and second side members. The signal responsive moiety reflects, absorbs, or refracts incident laser light. Described are nucleic acid hybridization assays, nucleic acid sequencing, immunoassays, cell counting assays, and chemical detection. Adaptation of the assay device substrate to function as an optical waveguide permits assay geometries suitable for continuous monitoring applications.

The invention relates to a method for separating and extracting stem cells from a placenta, umbilical cord or adipose tissue, which comprises the following process steps: firstly mixing the placenta, umbilical cord or adipose tissue and a cell maintenance fluid according to the proportion by weight of 2.5-4:1, putting the mixture into a tissue crushing barrel, adding collagenase after crushing, uniformly mixing, hatching at the temperature of 37 DEG C, filtering, adding a precipitator, sucking a supernatant fluid after settling, centrifuging, removing the supernatant fluid, adding concentrated cells into a liquid of diatrizoate sodium-ficoll 400#, then centrifuging, collecting 10-15 ml of intermediate cell layer, washing with the cell maintenance fluid, counting the collected cells, and providing the cells for clinical use when the cell survival ratio is more than or equal to 95 percent. The invention not only realizes the separation and the extraction of all stem cells from the placenta, umbilical cord or adipose tissue, but also realizes industrialized production, and enables doctors to conveniently, safely and canonically obtain the adult stem cells in clinic and use the adult stem cells for treating the diseases of patients as using medicaments, thereby solving the bottleneck problem of difficult obtainment of adult stem cells in clinic and popularizing a cell treatment technology.

The present invention provides methods and systems for performing in vivo flow cytometry. In one embodiments, selected circulating cells of interest of a subject are labeled with fluorescent probe molecules. The labeled cells are irradiated in vivo so as to excite the fluorescent probes, and the radiation emitted by the excited probes is detected, preferably confocally. The detected radiation is then analyzed to derive desired information, such as relative cell count, of the cells of interest.

The enumeration of cells in fluids by flow cytometry is widely used across many disciplines such as assessment of leukocyte subsets in different bodily fluids or of bacterial contamination in environmental samples, food products and bodily fluids. For many applications the cost, size and complexity of the instruments prevents wider use, for example, CD4 analysis in HIV monitoring in resource-poor countries. The novel device, methods and algorithms disclosed herein largely overcome these limitations. Briefly, all cells in a biological sample are fluorescently labeled, but only the target cells are also magnetically labeled. In addition, non-magnetically labeled cells are imaged for viability in a modified slide configuration. The labeled sample, in a chamber or cuvet, is placed between two wedge-shaped magnets to selectively move the magnetically labeled cells to the observation surface of the cuvet. An LED illuminates the cells and a CCD camera captures the images of the fluorescent light emitted by the target cells. Image analysis performed with a novel algorithm provides a count of the cells on the surface that can be related to the target cell concentration of the original sample. The compact cytometer system provides a rugged, affordable and easy-to-use technique, which can be used in remote locations.

A system for enumeration of cells in fluids by image cytometry is described for assessment of target populations such as leukocyte subsets in different bodily fluids or bacterial contamination in environmental samples, food products and bodily fluids. Briefly, all cells in a biological sample are fluorescently labeled, but only the target cells are also magnetically labeled. A small, permanent magnet is inserted directly into the chamber containing the labeled sample. The magnets are coated with PDMS silicone rubber to provide a smooth and even surface which allows imaging on a single focal plane. The cells are illuminated and the images of the fluorescent light emitted by the target cells are captured by a CCD camera. Image analysis performed with a novel algorithm provides a count of the cells on the surface that can be related to the target cell concentration of the original sample.

Disclosed in one aspect is a method for performing a complete blood count (CBC) on a sample of whole blood by metering a predetermined amount of the whole blood and mixing it with a predetermined amount of diluent and stain and transferring a portion thereof to an imaging chamber of fixed dimensions and utilizing an automated microscope with digital camera and cell counting and recognition software to count every white blood cell and red blood corpuscle and platelet in the sample diluent/stain mixture to determine the number of red cells, white cells, and platelets per unit volume, and analyzing the white cells with cell recognition software to classify them.

The invention discloses a cell counting method based on a depth deconvolution neural network. The method comprises the steps: 1, constructing the depth deconvolution neural network; 2, carrying out the preprocessing of a cell image; 3, training a network model; 5, firstly setting a threshold and removing miscellaneous points, and secondly calculating the number of remaining communication blocks in the image, wherein the number of number of remaining communication blocks in the image serves as the number of cells; 5, firstly inputting a non-trained cell image after preprocessing to the depth deconvolution neural network with the optimized network connection weight, secondly obtaining a Gaussian kernel heat map of an original cell image, and finally obtaining a final count value after post-processing. The method carries out the mining and extraction of the feature and spatial information of the cell image through a deconvolution deep learning network, enables an output layer image to be recovered to a size equal to the size of an input layer image, trains one end-to-end network, and can guarantee the higher counting accuracy.

Biological cells in a liquid suspension are counted in an automated cell counter that focuses an image of the suspension on a digital imaging sensor that contains at least 4,000,000 pixels each having an area of 2×2 μm or less and that images a field of view of at least 3 mm². The sensor enables the counter to compress the optical components into an optical path of less than 20 cm in height when arranged vertically with no changes in direction of the optical path as a whole, and the entire instrument has a footprint of less than 300 cm². Activation of the light source, automated focusing of the sensor image, and digital cell counting are all initiated by the simple insertion of the sample holder into the instrument. The suspension is placed in a sample chamber in the form of a slide that is shaped to ensure proper orientation of the slide in the cell counter.

An apparatus and method for concentrating and measuring low levels of cells in biological samples. The apparatus, or concentration device, consists of two chambers with an optically level collection membrane intermediating between the chambers. The collection membrane filters the biological sample, trapping cellular elements of interest. A vacuum may be attached to the device to assist in filtration. The surface area of the collection membrane matches the view field of a standard imaging system and the device can be mounted on a standard microscope stage. All the cells in the sample volume are collected onto the membrane. The view field provides a fixed volumetric area for cell counting. Since the volume of sample tested is known, the total number of cells in the original sample may be calculated. The sample reservoir of the concentration device may also be used for sample preparation. The concentration device is fully-contained; therefore, the investigator does not have to handle the sample once it is placed in the sample reservoir.

The invention discloses a cell counting method based on image identification. In the method of the invention, by means of computer vision, solid section information is converted into digital image information by a sensor, and the cell counting is finished by image processing. The method of the invention has the excellent expandability and generality, can detect various cells except immunocyte, and can classify the cells in accordance with cell characteristics and the counting accuracy rate is more than 98%.

The invention discloses a multi-task learning cell counting method based on a convolutional neural network, which is suitable for carrying out cell counting in a biological cell microscopic image withrelatively dense cells and relatively large quantity. The method comprises the following steps: preprocessing the biological cell image data set to obtain a training set and a test set; constructinga convolutional neural network model of cell counting based on multi-column feature map fusion and multi-task learning; training the convolutional neural network model, using the training set after pretreatment and the network model, and through the propagation algorithm and parameter updating, obtaining the optimized model weight parameters; testing the convolutional neural network model, using the pretreated test set and the weight parameters of the optimal network model, testing the cell picture, getting the output cell density map and the number of cell estimates, and performing evaluation. The method can improve the performance of biological cell counting and improve the accuracy rate.

The present disclosure is generally directed to systems for the storage and preservation of an original tissue or cell sample onboard a microfluidic device, such as a cytometry chip. In some embodiments, the sample may be disassociated while onboard the microfluidic device.