Patent ID: 7153404

Claim:
A method for picking spots ( 3 ) out of a gel sheet ( 1 ) containing a plurality of spots comprising: a) applying at least two reference marks ( 5 ′– 5 ′″) to said gel sheet ( 1 ); b) measuring the distances (d 1 –d 3 ) between said reference marks ( 5 ′– 5 ′″) and the distances between each of said spots ( 3 ) and said reference marks ( 5 ′– 5 ′″), and storing said distances in a memory; c) moving said gel sheet to a spot picker device; d) measuring in said spot picker device the distances (d 1 ′–d 3 ′) between said reference marks ( 5 ′– 5 ′″); e) comparing the distances (d 1 ′–d 3 ′) and (d 1 –d 3 ) in order to calculated how much the gel sheet ( 1 ) has been deformed; f) calculating a new position for each spot ( 3 ) based on the deformation calculated in step e); and, g) positioning the spot picker head at, and picking spots ( 3 ) at, the new position for each spot calculated in step f).