Method for qualitative and quantitative determination of immunological reactions
First Claim
1. A method for qualitative determination of the immunoreactive component of a biological fluid test specimen, which method comprises:
- (a) introducing said biological fluid test specimen with a reagent therefor into a reaction zone, said reagent comprising substantially opaque immunologically active colloidal particles,(b) evenly mixing and incubating said biological fluid test specimen and said reagent in said reaction zone,(c) transilluminating the contents of said reaction zone with radiant energy and imaging the light beams transmitted therethrough on the surface of an image sensor thereby forming dark areas corresponding to agglutinated particles in said reaction zone.(d) measuring the total dark areas on the surface of said image sensor,(e) repeating steps (a) through (d) for a reference sample, and(f) comparing the total dark imaged areas obtained for said biological fluid test specimen with the total imaged dark areas corresponding to said reference sample.
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Abstract
A method for qualitative and quantitative determination of agglutination in immunoreactive systems, and for determining the concentration of the immunoreactive components of such system, which method comprises introducing a fluid biological test specimen and a reagent therefor (e.g., latex spheres) into a reaction zone in an image cell and evenly mixing and incubating the mixture thereby forming agglutinated particles. The reaction zone is then transilluminated and the light beams transmitted therethrough are imaged on an image sensor. Dark areas are formed on the surface of the image sensor which are measured, preferably electronically. This procedure is repeated for a reference specimen and the total dark imaged area is compared with the total dark area obtained for the unknown specimen for qualitative determination.
In order to obtain the concentration of the immunoreactive component in the unknown specimen, the foregoing procedure is repeated for at least two specimens with known antibody concentrations, one of which may be a negative control. The concentration of the immunoreactive component of the unknown sample is then determined from the total dark imaged area thereof and the relationship between the total dark imaged areas of the known specimen and their respective concentrations.
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Citations
24 Claims
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1. A method for qualitative determination of the immunoreactive component of a biological fluid test specimen, which method comprises:
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(a) introducing said biological fluid test specimen with a reagent therefor into a reaction zone, said reagent comprising substantially opaque immunologically active colloidal particles, (b) evenly mixing and incubating said biological fluid test specimen and said reagent in said reaction zone, (c) transilluminating the contents of said reaction zone with radiant energy and imaging the light beams transmitted therethrough on the surface of an image sensor thereby forming dark areas corresponding to agglutinated particles in said reaction zone. (d) measuring the total dark areas on the surface of said image sensor, (e) repeating steps (a) through (d) for a reference sample, and (f) comparing the total dark imaged areas obtained for said biological fluid test specimen with the total imaged dark areas corresponding to said reference sample. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
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13. A method of determining the concentration of immunoreactive components of biological fluid test specimen, which method comprises:
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(a) introducing said biological fluid test specimen with a reagent therefor into a reaction zone, said reagent comprising substantially opaque immunologically active colloidal particles, (b) evenly mixing and incubating said biological fluid test specimen and said reagent in said reaction zone, (c) transilluminating the contents of said reaction zone with radiant energy and imaging the light beams transmitted therethrough on the surface of an image sensor thereby forming dark areas corresponding to agglutinated particles in said reaction zone, (d) measuring the total dark areas on the surface of said image sensor, (e) repeating steps (a) through (d) for at least two control samples with known but different concentrations of immunoreactive components, (f) relating the total dark areas of said control specimen with the respective concentrations of said immunoreactive components, and (g) determining the concentration of said immunoreactive components of said biological fluid test specimen from the relationship obtained in step (f). - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24)
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Specification