Image sensors for generating counts of constituents in a volume of blood based on images

Inventors

Fine, Alan Marc • Rankaduwa, Madhuranga Srinath

Assignees

Alentic Microscience Inc

Abstract

Among other things, an integral image sensor includes a sensor surface having a surface area at which light-sensitive pixels are arranged in rows and columns. The surface area includes two or more light-sensitive subareas each of the subareas having been configured to have been diced from a wafer along two orthogonal dimensions to form a discrete image sensor. The two or more light-sensitive subareas are arranged along one of the two orthogonal dimensions. The sensor surface of the integral image sensor is flat and continuous across the two or more subareas.

Core Innovation

The invention provides an integral image sensor formed with two or more light-sensitive imaging subareas arranged along at least one row on a sensor surface, where successive light-sensitive imaging subareas along the row are separated by non-light sensitive areas. The sensor is described as having a flat, continuous coplanar sensor surface and can be made integral and large-area with intervening saw street regions, while maintaining coplanarity while dicing a wafer into multiple light-sensitive subareas and non-light-sensitive regions.

A method is provided for drawing a specimen of blood from a person and confining the specimen of blood to a monolayer at a surface of the integral image sensor, where the monolayer is associated with a known volume. The method causes the distribution of constituents in the imaged volume of blood to be representative of the overall distribution of constituents in the specimen.

Light is caused to pass through the specimen and be received at the integral image sensor, and images are captured at the multiple light-sensitive imaging subareas. The captured images are used to generate counts of one or more constituents based on the images, and the disclosure also describes an imaging approach that can include sensor drive circuitry and application processing.

Optional optical setups using beam-splitting components and filtering are described for multi-image, multi-spectral and/or multifocal imaging aligned to the sensor subareas.

Claims Coverage

The independent claim family covers a blood-analysis method that uses an integral image sensor with two or more light-sensitive imaging subareas separated by non-light sensitive areas, monolayer confinement with a known volume, and image-based generation of constituent counts. The dependent claims add inventive features related to sensor interconnect placement, wavelength filtering for monochromatic imaging, combining images from subareas into a larger single image, chamber spacing associated with the monolayer condition, relative motion mixing, and maintaining particular sensor surface characteristics.

Across the covered claims, the core inventive structure is the use of a monolayer-confined, known-volume blood specimen on an integral image sensor with multiple light-sensitive subareas separated by non-light sensitive areas, together with image capture at those subareas to generate constituent counts. The dependent features further specify interconnect/contact placement, wavelength filtering to produce monochromatic images, combining subarea images into a larger single image, predetermined chamber spacing linked to the monolayer condition, and representational mixing via relative motion between the chamber top and the sensor.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications