A Charge-coupled Device (CCD) Based Optical Detector for Lab-on-a-Chip
Keith Herold and Avraham Rasooly
from: Lab-on-a-Chip Technology (Vol. 2): Biomolecular Separation and Analysis (Edited by: Keith E. Herold and Avraham Rasooly). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2009)
Abstract
One important element of any Lab-on-a-chip is a detector that translates the physical assay into a convenient form. Among the many types of biodetection approaches (e.g. optical, electrochemical, piezoelectric and various others) optical detection is widely used. Here we describe a simple and relatively inexpensive charge-coupled device (CCD) camera based detector for monitoring chemiluminesce, florescence and colorimetric assays. The portable battery-operated detector includes an illumination source and a cooled CCD digital camera. The detector system, including camera operation, image acquisition and analysis, is controlled by a laptop computer. The level of detection of the system was found to be similar to the detection level of a commercial photomultipler based plate fluorometer. The multichannel CCD detector was used with an assay plate capable of testing nine samples simultaneously. The system is small and operated by a 12 volt source, so it is portable. The modular detector was designed to be used for a wide variety of optical detection modes including chemiluminesce, florescence and colorimetric assays and is suitable for point of care diagnostics and for providing healthcare to underserved population read more ...
