The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Oct. 16, 2001
Filed:
Sep. 22, 1999
Howard L. North, Jr., Los Gatos, CA (US);
Other;
Abstract
An ordinary vacuum blood collection tube assembly is rotated about its longitudinal axis to partition a blood sample into serum and formed elements by centrifugation. While still rotating a higher density, immiscible inert liquid is pumped into the vacuum blood collection tube assembly thereby displacing lower density serum towards the axis of rotation and thence out of the vacuum blood collection tube assembly to a serum receiver vessel. A contaminant detector located on the serum delivery conduit controls a 3 way valve to divert contaminants from the removed serum to a waste vessel so only clean serum is delivered to the serum receiver vessel. The serum delivery conduits, serum cannula, and contaminant detector are washed and dried between successive samples to limit sample carryover effects to acceptably low levels. These operations may be fully automated so a carousel of blood samples may be processed sequentiall to deliver clean serum to a second carousel of serum cups without operator intervention at the rate of about one sample per minute.