biogem: Agilent Scanner

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A larger picture of the Agilent Scanner

Agilent Scanner

Agilent's new microarray scanner (http://www.chem.agilent.com/Scripts/PDS.asp?lPage=398) is the product of advanced engineering, introducing features that make it the highest throughput, most sensitive, and most uniform microarray scanner on the market today. This scanner has a 48-slide carousel that enables the complete automation of microarray scans. This is the highest throughput scanner on the market. This is the most sensitive microarray scanner on the market today, with the ability to detect 0.02-0.05 chromophores per square micron (3-5x more sensitive than other scanners on the market). Increased sensitivity directly improves data quality and enables researchers to detect expression changes at the low end of transcript abundance, often the critical transcripts involved in cellular regulation. Agilent's scanner is the only instrument that adjusts the scanning focal plane in real time to ensure that every microarray feature is in focus. Because other scanners do not account for warping or variation in microarray glass slides, sensitivity may be compromised and additional error introduced to the resulting statistical data from competitive scanners. Because the intensity of fluorescent emission from microarray features is proportionate to scanner laser intensity, it is critical that fluctuations in this intensity are minimized in order to generate high quality measurements. Other scanners only monitor this fluctuation. Agilent's scanner is the only microarray scanner that continually adjusts the laser power in real-time to compensate for this intensity fluctuation. Agilent's scanner has a patented optical design that results in a global uniformity specification of less than 5%, allowing the scanner to discern small changes in signal intensity. This is important to researchers because it removes the variability of scanning the same slide on different days or having to print replicate features on an array to account for non-uniform scanning.

Totally automated scanning for 48 slides and up to 96 arrays (2 arrays per slide).
Feature extraction for Agilent and non agilent slides is automatic and requires less than a minute per array.
Scanning time for two arrays on a 1" x 3" glass slide in 2 colors and 5 micron resolution in under 7 minutes.
Two-dye capability, to support standard gene expression ratio analyses.
Offers Active Focusing (Dynamic auto-focusing), which reduces the contribution of glass imperfections without sacrificing sensitivity.

Laser stability control feature assure minimized contribution due to Laser intensity fluctuation during scans resulting in higher confidence data and reducing the number of needed replications.

Last Updated March 2008
By Dr. Gary Hardiman