Through-The-Lens Auto Focus
A key requirement for economical drug testing is high throughput,
and a principal impediment to high throughput is the need to refocus
the microscope for every sample that is examined. Conventional auto
focus techniques rely on image analysis and are just too slow to handle
high sample throughputs that are being sought in today’s drug testing
environment.
With the use of near-IR laser diodes and dichroic beam splitters
that allow for complete separations between wavelengths of the light
used for auto focusing and that used for imaging, OPTRA developed a
through-the lens auto focus technique. This technique allowed the
customer to continue to use their current microscope with some slight
modifications by OPTRA to mount our sensor directly to that microscope.
The ability to rapidly auto focus on each sample in a well plate allows
the continued use of inexpensive well plates with significantly
improved throughput without any sacrifice in image quality.
An added benefit to OPTRA’s solution for this customer is that our
modular approach to solving the problem allows customer units to be
retrofitted in the field. Because of the demonstrated throughput
improvements and low cost, this particular customer now delivers the
auto focus sensor on 100% of its drug testing systems at no additional
cost to his customers.
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