title: High-throughput pretreatment system in automated urinary sediment analyzer.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd., Tsuchiura Japan. miyake@merl.hitachi.co.jp
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Miyake
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Yamazaki
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kojima
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kurimura
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Horiuchi
mesh_terms: 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*