Development and testing of multi-well plates absorbance reader for clinical analysis using inexpensive Web-cam

Biochemical analysis and clinical tests like glucose, hemoglobin, cholesterol, iron, etc. are crucial for early illness diagnosis like diabetes, anemia and coronary deceases. These tests usually are done in state of the art instruments in well equipped laboratories in health centers. In some cases, these instruments are not portable, so they are not recommended for clinical field studies in remote areas. The present work shows a portable low-cost prototype of multiwell plates reader designed for clinical analysis. A Light Emission Diodes (LEDs) array is used as excitation source and an inexpensive webcam as detector. The light source illuminates the 96 well plates and the webcam take the image with 640x480 pixels. The data is acquired and processed by using a portable computer. 96 samples can be read including blanks and calibration standards simultaneously. Light absorption data are processed using a MatLab software designed in our laboratory to obtain calibration curves, standards lectures and samples concentration. The system was evaluated using different analytes series solutions: Neutral Red, Cooper (II) Ammonia Complex and Methyl Orange. The results shows that it is possible to measure few micro liters of solutions with adequate exactitude and precision of less than 3%. As possible analytical clinical application, iron determination was performed using Fe(III) Thiocyanate complex. This method is usually applied in serum samples analysis. The sensibility achieved with the proposed instrumentation configurations allows the analysis of iron in serum samples in the references values normal range (0.75 - 1.5 mg/L) in human.