High-throughput pretreatment system in automated urinary sediment analyzer.
BACKGROUND
Urine contains microscopically observable particles that can indicate certain types of disease in the urinary tract system. Determining these various types of sediments by manual operation is a cumbersome and time-consuming task. To eliminate this labor, we developed an automated urinary sediment analyzer with high-throughput pretreatment system.


METHODS
The pretreatment system mainly consists of four reaction vessels for dying samples (urine), a sheath flow chamber, and an unique sample carrier mechanism from the reaction vessel to the flow chamber, which enables overlapped processing, and rapid transfer of samples with small dispersion and a short buildup time.


RESULTS
The buildup time was experimentally found to be 1.8 s, and the extra-sample volume beside that for measurement was only 4.9 microl (1/20 of the total sample volume).


CONCLUSIONS
Short buildup time results in high throughput of 120 samples per hour, and relatively small extra-volume contributes to reduce carryover.
Miyake
R
R
Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd., Tsuchiura Japan. miyake@merl.hitachi.co.jp
Yamazaki
I
I
Kojima
Y
Y
Kurimura
M
M
Horiuchi
H
H
D001331:Automation; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005434:Flow Cytometry / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D013997:Time Factors; D014556:Urine / Q000737:chemistry*