Automated microdissection instrument for determining a location of a laser beam projection on a worksurface area

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10156501-B2
Application number	US-201715434200-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Feb 16, 2017
Priority date	Nov 5, 2001
Publication date	Dec 18, 2018
Grant date	Dec 18, 2018

Abstract

Systems and methods for automated laser microdissection are disclosed including automatic slide detection, position detection of cutting and capture lasers, focus optimization for cutting and capture lasers, energy and duration optimization for cutting and capture lasers, inspection and second phase capture and/or ablation in a quality control station and tracking information for linking substrate carrier or output microdissected regions with input sample or slide.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for automatically determining the location of a laser beam projection on a worksurface area of a laser microdissection instrument that is operatively coupled to a microprocessing device and a digital image acquisition system containing a digital image sensor, the method comprising the steps of:
emitting a laser beam from a laser used in a cut-and-capture microdissection of a biological sample at an intensity at a level sufficient to be detected by the digital image sensor;
detecting the sufficient light intensity of the laser beam by the digital image sensor;
determining the pixel location of the laser beam on the digital image sensor;
converting the pixel location of the laser beam on the digital image sensor to a coordinate location corresponding to the worksurface area; and
assigning the coordinate location to the location of the laser beam, wherein the coordinate location establishes a zeroed location.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein detecting a sufficient light intensity of the laser beam includes turning off background illumination.

3. The method of claim 1 further including, controlling the movement of the laser beam relative to the worksurface from the assigned zeroed coordinate location to a target location of an area of interest of a biological sample.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein detecting a sufficient light intensity of the laser beam includes increasing the intensity of the laser beam.

Assignees

• Life Technologies Corp

Inventors

• Baer Thomas M
• Youngquist Michael G
• Donovan Brian W
• Wessel Alan E
• Leclerc Norbert H
• Smith Michael A
• Barker Craig S
• Dawson George M

Classifications

• Y10T156/10

  Methods of surface bonding and/or assembly therefor · CPC title

• G01N2001/284

  using local activation of adhesive, i.e. Laser Capture Microdissection · CPC title

• G01N1/2813 Primary

  Producing thin layers of samples on a substrate, e.g. smearing, spinning-on (G01N1/30 takes precedence) · CPC title

• Y10T156/1054

  and simultaneously bonding [e.g., cut-seaming] · CPC title

• G01N2001/282

  with mapping; Identification of areas; Spatial correlated pattern · CPC title