This imaging station is designed to measure fluorescence abundance in the pipette tip or tube attached to it. It was designed for real-time PCR imaging but it could be used for monitoring other types of reactions as well. The fluorescence color detection scheme is FAM/FITC/FAM.
The system includes:
- Mechanical assembly
- Raspberry Pi
- 2 Power supplies
- Adjustable focus Raspberry Pi camera
- Camera band pass filter
- Filter and diffuser
- LED control electronics
- Python based MQTT client software and image processing tool for quantifying fluorescence
Example data
Here is an example of visualizing Taqman probes in a tube attached to a pipette for doing based PCR reaction detection. The model reaction is mouse beta-actin nucleic acid test using mouse cDNA. The camera can include image processing code for tracking liquid level and measuring fluorescence for FAM dyes. The animated images show the box that tracks the signal. The LabBot (3D printer) moves the tip at different Z heights as the signal is quantified.