Advanced Imaging Technology for Biochip Analysis

描述（由申请人提供）这个快速通道项目的主要目标是开发和商业化一种通用且廉价的基于ccd的微阵列成像和定量系统。该系统的一个与众不同的特点是能够进行时间门控成像，这将在某些基底（如膜）上提供有效的背景抑制，并增强对多路标记的识别。第一阶段研究的主要目标是量化这些好处，并评估这些好处对最终用户的价值，从而评估技术可行性，并确定时间门控成像系统的商业开发是否合理。时间门控成像的背景抑制需要使用特定的标签，其好处将在某些基材上最明显。因此，该系统将在尼龙膜上使用长寿命荧光试剂进行测试。这种组合有望为目标应用程序提供出色的性能。同样重要的是，该系统应该能够同时成像两个标签。这可以实现与光谱滤波单独，但我们将研究是否时间分辨成像显著增强辨别。因为我们的目标是开发一个多功能系统，我们还将测试该系统的化学发光成像。我们预计所提出的系统将使荧光标记能够在高结合容量膜（如尼龙）上进行高灵敏度核酸微阵列杂交实验。由于高背景荧光和放射性同位素检测的空间分辨率差，这些底物目前仅限于大阵列格式的放射性同位素标记。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant)The broad objective of this Fast Track project is to develop and commercialize a versatile and inexpensive CCD-based system for microarray imaging and quantification. A differentiating feature of this system will be the capability to perform time-gated imaging, which will provide the benefits of effective background suppression on certain substrates such as membranes and enhanced discrimination of multiplexed labels. The primary objectives of this phase I study will be to quantify these benefits and to assess the value of these benefits to end users and hence to assess technical feasibility and to determine whether the commercial development of a time-gated imaging system is justified. Background suppression by time-gated imaging requires the use of specific labels, and its benefits will be most apparent on certain substrates. Thus, the system will be tested with long-lifetime fluorescent reagents on nylon membranes. This combination is expected to provide excellent performance for target applications. It is also essential that the system should be capable of the simultaneous imaging of two labels. This can be accomplished with spectral filtering alone, but we will investigate whether time resolved imaging significantly enhances discrimination. Because it is our objective to develop a versatile system, we will also test the system for chemiluminescent imaging. We anticipate that the proposed system will enable the use of fluorescent labels for high-sensitivity nucleic acid microarray hybridization experiments on high binding capacity membranes (e.g. nylon). These substrates are currently are limited to radioisotopic labels on macroarray formats because of high background fluorescence and the poor spatial resolution of radioisotopic detection.