Parallelization of chip-based fluorescence immuno-assays with quantum-dot labeled beads

This paper presents an optical concept for the read-out of a parallel, bead-based fluorescence immunoassay conducted on a lab-on-a-disk platform. The reusable part of the modular setup comprises a detection unit featuring a single LED as light source, two emission-filters, and a color CCD-camera as standard components together with a spinning drive as actuation unit. The miniaturized lab-on-a-disk is devised as a disposable. In the read-out process of the parallel assay, beads are first identified by the color of incorporated quantum dots (QDs). Next, the reaction-specific fluorescence signal is quantified with FluoSpheres-labeled detection anti-bodies. To enable a fast and automated read-out, suitable algorithms have been implemented in this work. Based on this concept, we successfully demonstrated a Hepatitis-A assay on our disk-based lab-on-a-chip.