Motorized Riser Platform for Leveling Sample Plates
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Solution Overview
Problem
Optical scanning systems for multi-well plates and glass slides face accuracy issues due to minute defects such as variations in plate thickness and warpage, which affect the uniformity of sample spacing and scanner head focus, leading to suboptimal detection performance.
Innovation Solution
A base plate with motorized risers and a sample plate support platform that can tilt independently to maintain the sample plate in a level orientation parallel to the scanner head, combined with an auxiliary unit for planar alignment of sample sites, ensuring accurate and uniform scanning across the array.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If multi-well plates are constructed with flat bottoms of glass or transparent material to allow scanning through the bottom, then optical scanning can be performed, but minute defects in the plate such as variations in thickness and warpage cause the distance from the scanner head to vary, interfering with scanning accuracy
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a dynamic adjustment mechanism using motorized risers that can independently adjust the height of each corner of the support platform. This allows the system to dynamically compensate for plate defects (thickness variations, warpage) by tilting and leveling the platform to match the scanner head's reference plane, thereby maintaining scanning accuracy despite manufacturing imperfections in the plates
Solution Approach 2:
The system incorporates position sensors that detect the actual position of the support platform relative to the scanner head's reference plane. This feedback information is used by the motorized risers to automatically adjust the platform's orientation and level, creating a closed-loop control system that ensures accurate scanning by continuously correcting for plate defects
2Reliability
If a short depth of field is used in optical scanning systems to reject background fluorescence, then detection effectiveness is improved, but accurate detection requires a high degree of uniformity of spacing between each sample and the scanner head
Solution Approach 1:
The motorized risers provide dynamic adjustment capability that allows the support platform to be precisely leveled and tilted. This dynamic positioning ensures that the sample plate maintains uniform spacing and proper orientation relative to the scanner head's focal plane, enabling the system to achieve and maintain the required spacing uniformity for accurate detection with short depth of field
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces reliance on mechanical precision of the plates themselves with an active mechanical adjustment system. Instead of depending on perfectly manufactured plates, the system uses motorized risers with position sensors to actively maintain the correct geometry, substituting passive mechanical precision with active controlled positioning
Data Source
AI summary
A platform that supports a sample plate such as a microtiter plate, a multi-well plate of any size, or a glass slide with sample spots distributed over its surface, and presents the plate for assay detection by a movable scanning head that has a field depth on the millimeter scale is leveled or otherwise adjusted in a planar orientation by an apparatus that includes a rocker plate, position sensors, and motorized risers arranged on the apparatus to provide the rocker plate with tilting capability along either or both or two orthogonal axes.