Patent ID: 7433025

Claim:
An apparatus that automatically captures stores and analyzes images of crystallization experiments contained in a plurality of crystallization plates, comprising: a plate nest capable of accommodating protein crystallization plates of a plurality of different types, said plates each including a plurality of crystallization wells each including a particular crystallization experiment; image acquisition optics, including an objective lens and an image capturing device, for focusing an image of a crystallization well positioned under said objective lens and electronically capturing said focused image; a light source including a bright field illumination device and a dark field illumination device, each of said bright field and dark field illumination devices being independently energized to introduce light into a crystal image well to enable capture of separate bright field and dark field images of said crystal image well by said image acquisition optics; a nest positioning controller for moving the position of said plate nest with respect to said image acquisition optics to align various selected wells with said objective lens for imaging of the content of said wells; a database for storing experiment information associated with each of said plurality of crystallization plates, said experiment information including identification of specific crystal forming parameter values, and wherein each of said plurality of crystallization plates is identified in said database by a unique identification code; and a crystallization imaging controller for controlling crystallization imaging by retrieving said experiment information for each crystallization plate inserted into said apparatus, and controlling said nest positioning controller and said image acquisition optics in accordance with said retrieved experiment information.