SUMMARY:
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microdispensing can accurately place PolyAn calibration beads into bead arrays
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This technique boosts reproducibility and enables reliable performance assessment of fluorescence imaging systems.
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The approach shown here can be used for consistent calibration across instruments by targeting fluorescence intensity, particle size, and counting accuracy
Background
Reproducibility in bead array experiments is a core challenge. To enable monitoring of day-to-day performance and comparison of different fluorescence-based instruments, PolyAn offers specially designed beads for the calibration of fluorescence imaging systems for bead arrays. These beads can be used to evaluate the instrument’s sensitivity regarding fluorescence intensity, size determination, and particle counting.
Reasons for Using Inkjet Printing
- Microdispensing is a versatile technique allowing the handling of many different substrates and compounds- also for downward applications
- With an automatic positioning system spots can be placed into very fine structures
Method
Here we show that Fluorescent Spectrum Calibration Beads from PolyAn GmbH (Berlin, Germany) can be spotted by dispensing systems from microdrop Technologies GmbH (Norderstedt, Germany) into a bead-based microarray at the inlet/outlet ports of a microfluidic chip manufactured by Little Things Factory GmbH (Elsoff, Germany).
The figure shows PolyAn’s Spectrum Calibration Beads, which are designed for calibration, performance evaluation, and comparison of fluorescence-ba-
sed imaging systems such as imaging cytometry. The beads contain a mixture of fluorophores that can be excited at any wavelength from
365–650 nm, and allow a performance validation within most common detection channels.
Conclusion
The spots give clear distinctive signals. This suggests that the combination of PolyAn’s Spectrum Calibration Beads with printing can be used to standardized performance readouts in small bead arrays.