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Self-smearing Self-staining Slide maker

Team 06 Winter 2019

Self smearing Slides

Full workflow demo

Background:

Digital imaging and image recognition systems have revolutionized clinical hematology laboratory service. However, these powerful tools currently are available only in large laboratories with expensive equipment that costs over several hundred thousand dollars. Much clinical hematology is performed in “distributed”, small laboratories associated with physician offices or clinics. The hematology analyzers in these small laboratories often cost less than $10K and have limited capability that would be greatly enhanced by digital imaging of their patients’ blood smears because imaged smears provide much more information than the inexpensive analyzers and allow access to remote, expert review.

Many patients with serious hematology disorders including leukemia, lymphoma, malaria, and hemolytic anemia have delayed diagnoses because their blood samples must be sent to distant, large laboratories. To partially address this un-met need, CellaVision AB (Lund, Sweden) is planning to market the DMsmall, a smaller, less expensive version of their DM96 hematology digital imaging device which almost has a monopoly on the market of digital imaging in large clinical hematology laboratories.

A critical companion device for optimal function of the DM96 is a slide-maker-stainer (SMS). Digital imaging in clinical hematology depends greatly on the quality of the stained blood smears. Manually made blood smears, especially by inexperienced personnel, can greatly compromise the function of digital imaging devices. So, most laboratories with DM96 instruments use blood smears made by large, expensive ($100K+), SMS. Cellavision has no plans to design their own SMS to accompany the DMsmall, so this proposal is to develop a less expensive SMS for small clinical laboratories and possibly to design an interface between the SMS and the DMsmall.

Objectives:

1. Make blood smears semi-automatically

2. Adjustable speed, pressure, and contact surface shape

3. Smear monolayer of blood cells

4. Avoid cross-contamination of samples

5. Adaptable with the standard Sysmex glass slides

Final Design:

The final design consists of 3 major components:

1. Transportation mechanism