Method and system relating to cooling conditions for a biological sample

Inventors

Morris, George • Kilbride, Peter • Milne, Stuart

Assignees

Biosafe SA

Abstract

Disclosed is a computer-implemented method comprising: obtaining first data indicative of electric power supplied to a cooling apparatus during a cooling operation on a biological sample, the cooling operation having a given cooling condition; obtaining second data associated with a reference cooling condition; determining, based on the first data and the second data, whether the given cooling condition has a predetermined relationship with the reference cooling condition; and in response to a determination, by the determining, that the given cooling condition has the predetermined relationship with the reference cooling condition, outputting a control signal. The given cooling condition for the “live” data cooling operation may thus be validated against a reference cooling condition.

Core Innovation

The invention provides a computer-implemented validation of a given cooling condition for cooling a biological sample using electric power information from a cooling apparatus during a cooling operation. The method obtains first data indicative of electric power supplied to the cooling apparatus under the given cooling condition and obtains second data associated with a reference cooling condition. The method determines, based on the first data and the second data, whether the given cooling condition has a predetermined relationship with the reference cooling condition.

When the determination finds that the given cooling condition has the predetermined relationship with the reference cooling condition, the method outputs a control signal. Variants provide an alert and/or user-interface indication when the relationship does not match. The reference cooling condition is represented in terms of electric-power data relationships, such as a signature power curve or fingerprint power curve.

The disclosed approach supports defining the predetermined relationship using predetermined relationship metrics derived from the electric power data, including comparisons of relationship metrics and statistical metrics. Examples include differentials and peak-power comparisons, statistical comparison metrics such as power-curve integrals, and spike or outlier detection based on electric-power derivatives. The system implementation includes a processor and a programmable power supply, optionally with cryocooler hardware, to implement the computer-implemented validation using the obtained electric-power data.

Claims Coverage

The independent claim is clm-00001. It covers a computer-implemented method that compares electric-power data from a cooling operation against reference cooling-condition data to determine whether a predetermined relationship holds, and outputs a control signal in response to the determination.

Across the independent claim and its dependents, the inventive concept is to validate cooling conditions for a biological sample by comparing electric-power data from a cooling apparatus during a cooling operation to reference cooling-condition data, and to output a control signal based on whether the predetermined relationship is satisfied.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications