Analogic Corporation

Furuno Diagnostics America, Inc.

Gopal Gopinathan

William M Wong

Carl M Good

John Fallon

Qiang Xue

Xue-Song Li

Edmund F Becker

A system for assaying a fluid sample for one or more types of analytes, which employs at least one class of finely divided polystyrene spheroidal particles, each class being limited to a predetermined specific narrow range of particle diameters, the particles of each such class being coated with a specific reactant unique for that class. After the coated particles are mixed with the sample to specifically react to form conjugates of the particles and any of the analyte present, the mixture is irradiated with bursts of ultrasound swept over a range of frequencies resonant to the expected conjugate sizes. The presence of the conjugates and therefore the analyte is detected directly by measuring any selective absorption or scattering of waves of frequencies to which the conjugates are resonant.

Particle agglutination assay system

A beamformer includes an array having a plurality of channels of delay elements which are constructed of charge coupled devices (CCDs). Each channel has a first plurality of delay elements cells which perform beam focussing and a second plurality of delay elements which perform beam steering. In this manner beam steering delays and beam focussing delays may be calculated independently. Typically, the second plurality of delay elements have a resolution which is typically coarser than the resolution of the first plurality of delay element cells which function to focus the beam. A signal may be inserted into any one of the delay elements of the first plurality to provide an appropriate delay. The signal is then output from the last delay element of the first plurality to the second plurality. The signal is delivered from a selected delay element of the second plurality to a charge sum data bus, which combines the signals output from each of the channels. This combined signal may then be output to a common offset delay block, which in turn outputs the array signal having a common delay. A plurality of such arrays may be coherently combined. If the required delay exceeds the maximum delay provided by each channel, the output of each array may be offset by a maximum delay of a preceding array in the plurality of arrays in order to coherently combine all of the arrays. Desirably, a shift register having a single enable bit is dynamically controlled to select the appropriate delay by selecting a CCD delay cell.

Delay scheme and apparatus for focussing the transmission and reception

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Cary, NC, United States of America

Gopal Gopinathan