A Medical Device Daily

Centice (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina), a developer of advanced sensor technology, unveiled new laboratory solutions this week at the 57th annual Pittsburgh Conference and Exhibition Exposition on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (PITTCON), one of the largest yearly meetings focused on the worldwide laboratory science and instrumentation markets. It is being held this year at the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, Florida.

Centice is showcasing its Multimodal Multiplex Spectroscopy (MMS) technology, providing 10 to 100 times higher optical throughput compared with slit and fiber coupled spectrometers, in a paper presentation. The company said the large area encoded aperture yields 3.5X to 12X the signal-to-noise, as compared with slit-based instruments with equivalent resolution, achieved without compromising spectral resolution in UV/Vis, NIR, Raman and fluorescence measurement.

“Our MMS technology presents a new paradigm in molecular spectroscopy enabling researchers and industry to address new markets and a broad range of research and application-specific products,“ said CEO Mike Sullivan. “Working with our partners, we have changed the way spectrometers operate by delivering unparalleled measurement sensitivity while holding sub-nanometer resolution.“

Centice will demonstrate at the conference both the Raman, an MMS-based spectrometer system distributed by Ocean Optics (Dunedin, Florida), and the UV/Vis spectrometer from Newport (Irvine, California) based on Centice technology.

In other conference news:

• PerkinElmer (Boston), a global leader in health sciences and photonics, showcased new application-based laboratory solutions and product enhancements, including its latest WinLab32 for Atomic Absorption (AA) software with an integrated quality control (QC) charting option to provide customers with a comprehensive solution for increasing flexibility and productivity. The QC Charting feature allows laboratories to more easily prepare QC charts from results, as well as store customized templates for future use, without purchasing additional, third-party software.

Robert Friel, president of PerkinElmer Life and Analytical Sciences, said, “Our new product introductions and enhancements at PITTCON 2006 will help provide customers with 'smart thinking' solutions to create greater efficiency and accuracy in their laboratories.“

Other product introductions by PerkinElmer at the conference include Jade DSC, which offers new features to expand application capabilities and operating convenience for routine applications, QA/QC and education; and LabWorks LIMS v5.9, the latest version of PerkinElmer's LabWorks laboratory information management system.

• Bruker Daltonics (Billerica, Massachusetts), a unit of Bruker BioSciences which develops life science tools based on mass spectrometry, introduced the new AccuScreen method for high resolution, accurate mass extracted ion chromatograms on its micrOTOF ESI-TOF and micrOTOF-Q ESI-Q-q-TOF mass spectrometers. AccuScreen yields superior LC-MS and LC-MS/MS performance in target compound analyses in complex matrices, the company said.

The AccuScreen accurate mass ion chromatograms (AMICs) reduce chemical background interference and greatly improves specificity over normal +/- 0.5 Dalton (Da) extracted ion chromatograms. The AccuScreen AMICs can be generated with a tolerance down to +/- 0.002Da, enabled by the advanced design of the micrOTOF-series with external calibration of better than 5ppm, and high resolution better than 10,000 (FWHM) over the entire MS/(MS) mass range run and across the full dynamic range of a typical HPLC run.

“In contrast to traditional target-specific triple-quadrupole mass spectrometry assays, AccuScreen enables screening approaches without the need to know the target compounds already before the analysis,“ said Dr. Ian Sanders, vice president of Bruker Daltonics.

• New “information-rich“ detection systems are among the recently introduced products highlighted by Varian (Palo Alto, California) at the gathering, the company said.

The 500-MS LC Ion Trap is a new liquid chromatograph/mass spectrometer, incorporating Varian's SelecTemp and Enhanced Charge Capacity, to enable optimum analysis of thermally labile compounds. Its unidirectional triple resonance scan function allows for up to 50 times more sensitivity in full-scan mode than other quadrupole mass spectrometers while scanning 10 times faster, the company said.

The 810-MS and 820-MS ICP-MS instruments improve performance and throughput for elemental analysis of complex samples. Core to both products is Varian's high efficiency 90-degree ion optics and double off axis quadrupole, delivering low background noise and sensitivity. The 820-MS also features Varian's integrated interference management technology, the Collision Reaction Interface (CRI). The CRI's advanced automated tuning and instrument setup routines to enable laboratories to easily achieve lower detection limits and more accurate quantitation for difficult elements in complex samples.