Designing an automated blood fractionation system

Abstract

Background: UK Biobank will be collecting blood samples from a cohort of 500 000 volunteers and it is expected that the rate of collection will peak at ~3000 blood collection tubes per day. These samples need to be prepared for long-term storage. It is not considered practical to manually process this quantity of samples so an automated blood fractionation system is required. Methods: Principles of industrial automation were applied to the blood fractionation process leading to the requirement of developing a vision system to identify the blood fractions within the blood collection tube so that the fractions can be accurately aspirated and dispensed into micro-tubes. A prototype was manufactured and tested on a range of human blood samples collected in different tube types. Results: A specially designed vision system was capable of accurately measuring the position of the plasma meniscus, plasma/buffy coat interface and the red cells/buffy coat interface within a vacutainer. A rack of 24 vacutainers could be processed in <5min. Conclusion: An automated, high throughput blood fractionation system offers a solution to the problem of processing human blood samples collected in vacutainers in a consistent manner and provides a means of ensuring data and sample integrity. © The Author 2008.