omation mbers - Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening

1:30 pm Thursday, February 5 Emerging Technologies – Performance Metrics Room A1
John Bradshaw
Artel, Inc.
25 Bradley Drive
Westbrook, Maine 04092
jbradshaw@artel-usa.com
141
Co-Author(s)
Alex L. Rogers, Tanya R. Knaide,
Richard H. Curtis, George Rodrigues
A Multichannel Volumetric Verification (MVV) System for Ensuring the Accuracy and Precision
of Liquid Delivery
Building upon their expertise in liquid delivery verification and their proprietary ratiometric photometry, Artel has
developed a system that overcomes the limitations of other methods (e.g., gravimetric, fluorimetric, or single dye
photometric) designed to calibrate automated liquid handling equipment. By measuring the absorbance ratio of
two photometric dyes, the MVV system determines both accuracy and precision of volume delivery from various
types of multichannel liquid handling equipment (both automated instrumentation as well as manual pipettes)
with 8-, 12-, or 96-tips operating over a volume range from 2 to 200 mµL. A suggested robust test protocol of
nine volumes over the working volume range requires from as little as one to at most three hours to perform,
depending on the speed of the liquid handler being validated. As well as providing speed, ease-of-use and high
performance in assessing accuracy and precision, the MVV system provides traceability to international standards
which answers regulatory compliance requirements and ensures comparable inter-laboratory results. In-house data
collected during the development of the MVV system, which shows good agreement with other approaches for
determining liquid delivery, will be presented as a validation of the dual-dye photometric approach. Field testing of
the MVV system on various makes of automated equipment will also be presented, further verifying this approach
as a fast and reliable method for determining volume delivery performance. Finally, data demonstrating the utility
of the MVV system for easily assessing and altering the aspirate/dispense parameters for creating optimized liquid
delivery protocols will be discussed.
2:00 pm Thursday, February 5 Emerging Technologies – Performance Metrics Room A1
Toshiyuki Shiina
Los Alamos National Laboratory
P.O. Box 1663 MS J580
Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545
tshiina@lanl.gov
Co-Author(s)
Torsten Staab
Derek Miller
Improving Sample Analysis Throughput and Quality With a C#.NET-based, Real-Time QC
Decision Support System
In this talk we present the current status and the future plan of an integrated, software-based quality control
system designed to significantly improve the sample analysis throughput and quality of Beryllium analysis
laboratories throughout the U.S. Department of Energy complex. Originally this system was developed for the
Perkin Elmer 4300DV Optical Emission Spectrometer, which is usually combined with an auto-sampler capable
of more than 100 samples per run. The current implementation of the device control software has no feedback
loop; hence requires constant manual monitoring by lab personnel. Our new control system is designed to enable
automatic data analyses in real-time in order to reduce operational costs and human error. To achieve these goals,
we have developed a rule-based expert system in the C#.NET programming language and ADO.NET (ActiveX
Data Object) that continuously extracts and analyzes data from the instrument’s result database as the data is
being generated. Using our customer-specified rule base, the system is capable of detecting abnormal operating
situations fully autonomously in real-time. This also enables the system to perform on-the-fly quality control and
automatic event notification of lab personnel via e-mail and/or pager.
PODIUM ABSTRACTS