Methods and apparatus are described herein for measurement of droplets dispensed from a printhead of an inkjet printer onto a substrate. An inkjet printer described herein comprises a printhead assembly comprising a printhead and an imaging system, the imaging system comprising a camera and a strobed LED source; and a deposition unit for positioning a substrate to receive droplets dispensed from the printhead and for imaging the droplets using the imaging system and the strobed LED source. Methods described herein comprise dispensing droplets of a liquid from a printhead of a printhead assembly of an inkjet printer onto a substrate; positioning the substrate with respect to an imaging system coupled to the printhead assembly, the imaging system comprising a camera and an LED light source; and imaging the droplets on the substrate by relatively scanning the substrate and the imaging system and strobing the LED light source.

The invention relates to a method and system for characterizing particles using a flow cytometer comprising detecting radiated light from the particles using two or more detectors positioned to allow for the detection in two or more angular directions and generating a waveform, as a digital representation for the detected radiated light for each of said angulation direction. The waveforms are transformed using one or more basis functions to obtain one or more coefficients characterizing the waveform. The one or more coefficients characterizing the waveform preferably correspond to properties of the particle(s), thereby enabling analysis of physical properties of the particles (such as size, shape, refractive index) or biological properties of the particles (such as cell type, cell cycle state or localization or distribution of molecules within the cell and/or on the cell surface). In preferred embodiments the method and system are used for a label-free sorting of particles, in particular biological cells.

The types of cells that cannot be determined by use of a conventional scattergram are determined. The problem is solved by a cell analysis method for analyzing cells contained in a biological sample, by using a deep learning algorithm having a neural network structure, the cell analysis method including: causing the cells to flow in a flow path; obtaining a signal strength of a signal regarding each of the individual cells passing through the flow path, and inputting, into the deep learning algorithm, numerical data corresponding to the obtained signal strength regarding each of the individual cells; and on the basis of a result outputted from the deep learning algorithm, determining, for each cell, a type of the cell for which the signal strength has been obtained.

The invention generally provides systems and methods for particle detection for minimizing microbial growth and cross-contamination in manufacturing environments requiring low levels of microbes, such as cleanroom environments for electronics manufacturing and aseptic environments for manufacturing pharmaceutical and biological products, such as sterile medicinal products. In some embodiments, systems of the invention incorporate a housing having an outer surface being a first antimicrobial surface and a touchscreen being a second antimicrobial surface. In some embodiments, substantially all of the outer surfaces of the system are antimicrobial surfaces. In some embodiments, the first antimicrobial surface may comprise an Active Screen Plasma alloyed layer. In some embodiments, the housing may comprise a molded polymer substrate and a metal coating layer bonded to the molded polymer substrate such that at least some exterior surfaces of the housing are metal coated surfaces.

The present invention discloses a three-dimensional diffraction tomography microscopy imaging method based on LED array coded illumination. Firstly, acquiring the raw intensity images, three sets of intensity image stacks are acquired at different out-of-focus positions by moving the stage or using electrically tunable lens. And then, after acquiring the intensity image stacks of the object to be measured at different out-of-focus positions, the three-dimensional phase transfer function of the microscopy imaging system with arbitrary shape illumination is derived. Further, the three-dimensional phase transfer function of the microscopic system under circular and annular illumination with different coherence coefficients is obtained as well, and the three-dimensional quantitative refractive index is reconstructed by inverse Fourier transform of the three-dimensional scattering potential function. The scattering potential function is converted into the refractive index distribution. Thus, the quantitative three-dimensional refractive index distribution of the test object is obtained. The invention realizes high-resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio 3D diffraction tomography microscopic imaging of cells, tiny biological tissues and other samples.

The present disclosure presents systems, apparatuses, and methods of holographic imaging. In this regard, a method comprises transmitting light and illuminating a semi-transparent sample object; and forming, at a hologram plane, an interference pattern of a real image of the sample object from a scattered object beam and an unscattered reference beam from the transmitted light. To do so, the scattered object beam and the unscattered reference beam are in-line with one another, and a distance between the hologram plane to the sample object is set at a distance that substantially weakens a virtual image of the sample object formed from the scattered object beam and the unscattered reference beam. Accordingly, the method further comprises recording the interference pattern of a hologram formed from the scattered object beam and the unscattered reference beam at a detector; and reconstructing a 3D optical field of the hologram without phase retrieval.

The present application relates to a method for the cytometric analysis of multiple cell samples by a microscope for examining multiple cell samples under a microscope, wherein the microscope can be or is operated, selectively and/or alternatingly, in a transmission mode and/or in a fluorescence mode, and wherein at least one cell sample has at least one fluorescence marker. The method includes; moving the cell samples continuously in one plane relative to an optical system of the microscope having at least one microscope camera, wherein, during the movement of the cell samples, at least one or more images of a sub-region of the cell samples are recorded in the transmission mode or in the fluorescence mode and at least one or more images of the same sub-region of the cell samples are recorded in the fluorescence mode by at least one microscope camera.

The present application discloses a nanoparticle recognition device and method based on detection of scattered light with electric dipole rotation. According to the scattering model of nanoparticles, the in situ detection of particle morphology in an optical trap is realized by the methods of particle suspension control and scattered light detection and separation. Specifically, two linearly polarized laser beams are used, wherein the first laser beam suspends nanoparticles and rotates nanoparticles by adjusting the polarization direction; the polarization direction of the second linearly polarized light is unchanged, and scattered light in a specific dipole direction is excited; the change of the polarizability of the nanoparticles is deduced by monitoring the change of the light intensity of the scattered light excited by the second laser beam at the fixed position, so that particle morphology recognition is realized.

A method of generating smear quality control information according to an embodiment may include: obtaining a plurality of image data from a plurality of smears, respectively; obtaining, from the plurality of image data, feature values each of which reflects a staining state of each smear; and generating quality control information based on the feature values.

An example system includes an input channel having a first end and a second end to receive particles through the first end, a sensor to categorize particles in the input channel into one of at least two categories, and at least two output channels. Each output channel is coupled to the second end of the input channel to receive particles from the input channel, and each output channel is associated with at least one category of the at least two categories. Each output channel has a corresponding pump operable, based on the categorization of a detected particle in a category associated with a different output channel, to selectively slow, stop, or reverse a flow of particles into the output channel from the input channel.