PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 16126090
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-09
Publication Date: 2019-04
Patent Classification: ["356", "479000"]

Abstract:
An apparatus and method for the accurate and non-invasive measurement of the volume of liquid samples by optical interferometry. Small volumes of liquid samples are often contained in and partially fill the wells of a microplate. A low-coherence interferometric ranging system is used to determine the topography of the sample surface exposed by each well. The surface topography, together with the measured, or otherwise known, dimensions of the well, determine the volume of the liquid sample. Embodiment options include confining the optical beams of the interferometer to optical fiber and varying the optical-path length by piezo-electric stretching of a portion of the fiber. Other embodiment options include automation of data collection by stepping the microplate beneath the interferometer, pixelating the optical beam of the interferometer and scanning the microplate by scanning the sample beam of the interferometer with a mirror. Uniformity of the microplate wells is not required.

Claim (Index 15):
The system of  claim 14 , wherein the sample beam has a sample beam optical path length and interferes with the reference beam, giving rise to an interference signal, wherein this interference signal is generated by varying the sample beam optical path length, and wherein the distance to the measurement point is determined based on this interference signal.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 11.0
- Percentile: 97.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.02532
- Patent Class: 356.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: none
- Component Type: 0
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15422757', '14683066', '15378494', '15268994', '15154454']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.6633993526406702
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5332192942995844
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.6503813468065616
- Mean Citation Score: 202.973518
- Max Citation Score: 333.48373
- Similarity Product: 211.2527132650888

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test