A simple portable electroluminescence illumination-based CCD detector.
In this chapter we describe a simple and relatively inexpensive Electroluminescence (EL) illumination and charged-coupled device (CCD) camera (EL-CCD) based detector for monitoring fluorescence and colorimetric assays. The portable battery-operated fluorescence detector includes an EL panel for fluoro-genic excitation at 490 nm, a cooled CCD digital camera to monitor emission at 523 nm, filters and a close up lens. The detector system is controlled by a laptop computer for camera operation, image acquisition and analysis. The system was tested using a fluorogenic peptide substrate (SNAP-25) for botulinum neurotoxin serotype A (BoNT-A) labeled with FITC. The level of detection of the system was found to be 1.25 nM of the peptide, similar to the detection level of a commercial photomultipler-based plate fluorometer. The multichannel EL-CCD was used with an assay plate capable of testing nine samples simultaneously in 1 min at this detection level. The portable system is small and is operated by a 12 V source. The modular detector was designed with easily interchangeable ELs, filters and lenses and can be used and adapted for a wide variety of fluorescence and colorimetric assays, fluorescence labels and assay formats.
Kostov
Yordan
Y
Center for Advanced Sensor Technology, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Sergeev
Nikolay
N
Wilson
Sean
S
Herold
Keith E
KE
Rasooly
Avraham
A
D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D008163:Luminescent Measurements / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D008904:Miniaturization; D055096:Optical Devices; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012666:Semiconductors; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods