Technical Consultion

We can review instrument and consumable designs, help you select components for your system, troubleshoot current issues and develop tooling for robust manufacturing or your products.

Technical Consulting

Design Review and Guidance

With deep expertise in consumables, fluidics, and optics, we provide technical guidance across all stages of product development. Whether you’re refining a design, troubleshooting system-level issues, or planning for scale-up, we offer practical, science driven solutions. Our cross-functional insight helps identify root causes, optimize performance, and ensure your technology is ready for robust, scalable manufacturing.

Component Selection and Testing

We offer comprehensive support for component selection and testing to ensure optimal performance and compatibility within your system. Our team works directly with vendors to evaluate components against your technical requirements, verify performance claims, and manage custom specifications where needed. This hands-on approach reduces risk, streamlines development, and ensures that every part of your system is built on a solid foundation.

Custom Calibration Tooling For Advanced Imaging Systems

When developing complex optical instrumentation, it’s important to be able to quantify imaging performance. We create custom tooling to measure key optical performance parameters:

Resolution and Point Spread Function (PSF)

Resolution is a critical metric in determining how well an imaging system can distinguish two closely spaced points. In practice, resolution can degrade due to imperfections in the optical elements, leading to a broadening of the Point Spread Function (PSF). When the PSF deviates from the ideal Airy pattern, especially across the field of view, fine details can be lost or merged, which can result in loss of system performance across the field of view.

Chromatic Aberration

Chromatic aberration occurs because different wavelengths of light focus at slightly different points along the optical axis and across the field of view. This can lead to color fringing and inconsistencies in multi-channel fluorescent imaging, impacting measurements and co-registration of multiple spectral channels.

Field Curvature and Off-Axis Distortions

Even if the on-axis image looks sharp, aberrations such as coma or astigmatism may degrade the image quality toward the edges. Field curvature in the focal plane can cause peripheral blur and geometric distortions, complicating automated image analysis that relies on uniform sharpness.

Multi-Camera Image Registration

In advanced imaging systems that use multiple cameras to capture different wavelengths simultaneously, lateral shifts, rotations, and magnification disparities between camera channels can lead to registration errors, ultimately leading to loss of throughput.

Our Approach

We work with you to design fiducial marker slides designed to fit your custom application. We have custom image processing algorithms that report resolution, chromatic shift, and distortion across the field of view. In multi-camera systems, these algorithms measure lateral, rotational and magnification differences between cameras. We also have algorithms to compensate or correct for distortion, curvature, or aberrations. Once the calibration tooling has been created and verified in your system, we will work with you to manufacture the tooling and integrate our algorithms into your custom software.

Why Partner With Us?

Technical Expertise: Our background in systems engineering and algorithm development allows us to tackle even the most challenging aberrations.
Custom Solutions: Off-the-shelf calibration tools may not fit into specialized applications. We build and validate custom fiducial slides and software tailored to your exact optical setup.
Holistic Approach: If desired, we can help you with hardware modifications or advanced image processing to ensure your imaging system delivers consistent, high-quality data.

By systematically identifying and correcting optical distortions, we can help enhance the fidelity and reliability of complex imaging systems.

Ready to quantify and improve your imaging quality? Contact us.

Surface Chemistry for Custom Consumables: Troubleshooting & QC Development

In the development of advanced life sciences consumables, achieving consistent and uniform surface chemistry can be a significant challenge. Whether you are working with silanes (such as epoxysilanes, aminosilanes, or their custom variations), or other complex coatings, the surface modifications must meet strict performance criteria. Non-uniform coatings can lead to poor assay reproducibility, inconsistent binding, and suboptimal assay sensitivity, ultimately resulting in reduced reliability and potentially higher costs.

Key Challenges in Surface Chemistry

Complex Coating Requirements: Different analytes and assay conditions often demand unique surface properties, from hydrophobic or hydrophilic interactions to functional groups needed for immobilizing biological molecules. Identifying the right combination of silanes, linker chemistries, and surface activation protocols is critical for robust performance.
Process Variability: Surface treatment steps, such as cleaning, activation, and silane deposition, can be sensitive to small fluctuations in temperature, humidity, and reagent concentration. These variations can lead to patchy or incomplete coatings that affect downstream assay performance.
Material Compatibility: Consumables frequently contain materials such as glass, polymers, or metals. Each substrate responds differently to specific surface treatments. Devising a universal protocol, or ensuring that a chemistry designed for one substrate does not compromise another, remains a technical hurdle.
Scalability and Quality Control (QC): Moving from proof-of-concept coatings to mass-scale production requires thorough QC measures. Robust analytical assays that assess the uniformity and functionality of the surface coating are necessary to ensure consistency across multiple production batches.

Our Technical Approach

Surface Uniformity: Our team designs and implements rigorous in-house assays including contact angle measurements, or fluorescence-based uniformity tests. When needed, we partner with labs capable of advanced spectroscopy to validate surface coverage and ensure uniform reagent binding.
Vendor Collaboration and QC Development: We work closely with manufacturing partners to implement and standardize quality control tests. From robust standard operating procedures to automated batch testing, we ensure every coated batch meets critical specifications.
Cross-Platform Testing: We have experience with a range of substrates; we will quickly identify the right chemistry or adapt existing protocols to match your consumable’s material and functional requirements.

By combining our specialized knowledge in silane chemistry, thorough testing protocols, and collaborative vendor relationships, we help you overcome the challenge of non-uniform or suboptimal surface chemistries. The result is a reliable, custom-tailored solution that supports high-performance assays, and scales from prototype to production.