Boehringer Mannheim Gmbh

Franz Bolduan

Karl Miltner

Ernst Markart

Detlef Thym

Helmut Leininger

Bernd Eisenbarth

Jorg Schreiber

Analytical system for evaluating test elements having means of determining whether a sufficient amount of sample liquid was evenly applied to an application zone comprising in a first embodiment of the invention at least two sources of light which illuminate separate or at least not fully overlapping areas of the application zone or the evaluation zone of the test strip, a control unit with which the light sources, of which there at least two, can be independently activated, at least one sensor which detects light reflected by the evaluation zone or transmitted by the evaluation zone and supplies an output signal proportional to the intensity of light as well as an evaluation unit which receives a first output signal from the sensor and converts it into a first measured value when the first of the light sources is activated, receives a second output signal from the sensor and converts it into a second measured value when the second of the light sources, is activated and compares the measured values and determines whether the deviation of the first value measured from the second value measured is sufficiently small. In a second embodiment of an analytical system according to the invention, at least one light source is used to illuminate the sample application zone or the evaluation zone of a test element and at least two sensors detect light reflected or transmitted by the evaluation zone, the output signal of the sensors being converted into measured values by the evaluation unit which determines whether the deviation of the measured values is sufficiently small.

Analytical system with means for detecting too small sample volumes

Test carrier analysis system for analyzing a constituent of a body fluid, consisting of test carriers (2), code carriers (3) and an evaluation device (4). The test layers (5) of the test carrier (2) contain reagents whose reaction with the sample leads to a color change characteristic of the analysis in a detection layer. The code carriers (3) contain in machine-readable form an evaluation code with an evaluation curve required for the evaluation of the test carriers. The evaluation device (4) comprises a measuring device, a code reading device and evaluation electronics. Possible operating errors are eliminated, almost without additional expenditure, by the fact that single code reader containing two reading units offset relative to one another both laterally and in the reading direction is positioned on a common insertion path (28) both for the test carriers (2) and for the code carriers (3), the test carriers (2) possess a batch-specific identification code in the form of continuous strips, the evaluation code on the code carriers (3) is a two-track code and contains a batch identification, and the evaluation device (4) comprises a comparison unit for checking the correlation of the batch of the respective test carrier (2) to be evaluated with the stored evaluation information.

Test carrier analysis system

Growing community of inventors

Mannheim, Germany

Franz Bolduan