One important step of the entire analyzing process represents the automated Sample Assessment which considerably eases further processing. The usable serum for aliquoting will be recognized and by using a special CCD camera three very important features can be analyzed: the exact tube type as well as its size, quality of the serum (good, icteric, lipemic, hemolytic). Through liquid level detection low cost, non-conductible pipetting tips can be used for aliquoting.
The determined values are then passed on to the LIS. Expense and time consuming manual quality control is now obsolete, the rate of defective samples is minimized and unnecessary downtimes as well as measurement errors are avoided. The systems described in the following are able to perform this function.
