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 10):
A system for measurement of the elevation of a free surface of a liquid sample above a support surface, wherein the liquid sample is held by the support surface, the system comprising:\n a low-coherence optical interferometer that is configured to determine the distance to a measurement point on the free surface of the liquid sample, wherein the support surface is positioned at a known distance from the interferometer; a surface shape measurement module comprising a camera configured to acquire an interference image of a portion of the free surface of the liquid, wherein this portion includes the measurement point, and a shape calculation unit configured to calculate the shape of the free surface of the liquid from the interference image; and an analysis unit that is configured to calculate the elevation of the free surface of the liquid sample above the support surface at a plurality of points from a difference of the known distance of the support surface from the interferometer and the determined distance to the measurement point on the free surface of the liquid sample and the shape of the free surface of the liquid sample determined by the surface shape measurement module.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 11.0
- Percentile: 97.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.02532
- Patent Class: 356.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15422757', '14683066', '15378494', '15268994', '15154454']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.6363368221468734
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5256233034403746
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.6252654702762235
- Mean Citation Score: 202.973518
- Max Citation Score: 333.48373
- Similarity Product: 270.7298252544456

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