Today's automated hematology analyzers capable of performing a full CBC and a differential leukocyte count (DLC) on whole blood, particularly in a closed tube system, using cytochemistry or impedance-based flow cytometry technology coupled with laser light scattering, conductivity and/or differential cell lysis, are here to stay. Their need and popularity among at least the large, cost and quality-conscious clinical laboratories have been growing for the past few years and will continue to do so in the years ahead. The efficiency and reliability of several of these analyzers in performing complete CBCD (CBC and DLC) and in flagging significant abnormalities have been tested and found acceptable with the need to review a stained blood smear or perform a manual DLC to confirm or obtain additional information on selected cases.
Automation ; Human ; Leukocyte Count/*methods

This paper introduces a kind of evaluation method in pipetting performance on new fully automated biochemistry analyzers by experiments. The performance of sample pipetting volume is confirmed by dye dilution method, the performance of reagent pipetting volume and dummy volume is done by weighing method. Meanwhile, researches and comparative researches on dummy volumes in different conditions have been made, providing valuable reference for clinical applications of automatic biochemistry analyzers.
Automation, Laboratory ; instrumentation ; methods ; Biochemistry ; instrumentation ; methods

Liquid level detection (LLD) is necessary for eliminating carry-over of needle's outside by limiting the depth the needle probes into liquid in auto clinical laboratory analyzers. This paper listed various demands of liquid-handling system under different situations; reviewed various LLD techniques, such as capacitive, air pressure, mechanical vibration, ultrasound, light reflection, CCD imaging etc.; briefly introduced the working principles, features, and limitation of the LLDs; and recapitulated the characteristics of contact and non-contact LLDs. Lastly, the next generation technique of LLD is prospected.
Automation ; Clinical Laboratory Techniques ; instrumentation ; methods

The authors devdeloped a computer program for automatic coding of ACR (American College of Radiology) code. The automatic coding of the ACR code is essential for computerization of the data in the department of radiology. This program was written in FoxBASE language and has been used for automatic coding of diagnosis in the Deparment of Radiology, Wallace Memorial Baptist Hospital since May 1992. The ACR dictionary files consisted of 11 files, one for the organ code and the others for the pathology code. The organ code was obtained by typing organ name or code number itself among the upper and lower level codes of the selected one that were simultaneously displayed on the screen. According to the first number of the selected organ code. the corresponding pathology code file was chosen augomatically. By the similar fashion of organ code selection, the proper pathologic dode was obtained. An example of obtained ACR code is "131.3661". This procedure was reproducible regardless of the number of fields of data. Bacause this program was written in "User's Defined Function" from, decoding of the stored ACR code was achieved by this same program and incoporation of this program into another data processing program was possible. This program had merits of simple operation, accurate and detail coding, and easy adjustment for another program. Therefore, this program can be used for automation of routine work in the department of radiology.
Automation ; Clinical Coding* ; Diagnosis ; Methods* ; Pathology ; Protestantism

This paper briefly introduces the basic principle of non-invasive automated sphygmomanometers, discusses its accuracy and influence factors and analyzes the Calibration test methods and its Inadequacies in application process as well.
Automation ; instrumentation ; methods ; Blood Pressure Determination ; instrumentation ; methods ; Sphygmomanometers

Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is an important auxiliary method for pathologists in routine diagnostic work as well as in basic and clinical research including exploration of biomarkers, as IHC allows confirmation of target molecule expressions in the context of microenvironment. Although there has been a considerable progress in automation and standardization of IHC, there are still many things to be considered in proper optimization and appropriate interpretation. In this review, we aim to provide possible pitfalls and useful tips for practicing pathologists and residents in pathology training. First, general procedure of IHC is summarized, followed by pitfalls and tips in each step and a summary of troubleshooting. Second, ways to an accurate interpretation of IHC are discussed, with introduction to general quantification and analysis methods. This review is not intended to provide complete information on IHC, but to be used as a basic reference for practice and publication.
Antigen-Antibody Reactions ; Automation ; Biomarkers ; Immunohistochemistry* ; Methods ; Pathology ; Publications

BACKGROUND: The conventional indocyanine green retention rate at 15 minutes (ICG R15) test is inefficient and inconvenient because it requires the use of a manual spectrophotometer and several samples per patient. This study aimed to establish the automation of the ICG R15 test using an automated clinical chemistry analyzer, and to evaluate the calculation of R15 with a small number of samples. METHODS: The performance of the AU5832 (Beckman Coulter, USA) for determining ICG concentration was evaluated in accordance with the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guidelines. The R15 results for 77 patients determined by spectrophotometry and AU5832 were compared. We evaluated the calculation of R15 with three samples, except for one sample in which the results had been obtained previously, at 5, 10, and 15 minutes after injection of ICG into the patients, and compared the results with those obtained with four samples. RESULTS: The automated ICG test using the AU5832 system showed proper performances according to CLSI. Although the difference in the R15 results between the two methods was within the 95% confidence interval, the R15 was adjusted by the regression equation because it was slightly lower according to the automated method compared with the manual method. The R15 with three samples (0, 5, and 15 minutes) showed the best correlation with conventional R15 with four samples (r2=0.996). Compared with the manual method, the R15 result using the AU5832 showed excellent agreement with four samples (kappa value 0.904) and with three samples (kappa value 0.880). CONCLUSIONS: The ICG R15 test using the AU5832 system is comparable with the conventional method in clinical use.
Automation ; Chemistry, Clinical* ; Humans ; Indocyanine Green* ; Methods ; Spectrophotometry

BACKGROUND: The use of automated systems for pre-transfusion tests is increasing in an attempt to reduce workload and the impact of human errors in blood banks. We evaluated the clinical performance of the automated blood bank systems IH-500 (Bio-Rad Laboratories, Switzerland) and VISION Max (Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, USA) for ABO-RhD blood typing and unexpected antibody screening. METHODS: ABO-RhD blood typing was performed for 410 samples, and antibody screening was performed for 332 samples, including 15 antibody-positive samples. The results obtained from the two automated instruments were compared with those obtained using manual methods for ABO-RhD blood typing and a semiautomated method (DiaMed-ID system) for antibody screening. Additionally, both instruments were evaluated in terms of concordance rates, sensitivity, and carryover. RESULTS: The concordance rate of the ABO-RhD blood typing results between the manual methods and the two automated instruments was 100%. For antibody screening tests, the concordance rates between the semiautomated method (DiaMed-ID system) and the automated methods were 100% and 99.7% for the IH-500 and VISION Max instruments, respectively. The sole discrepant result was obtained for a sample identified as antibody-positive only on the VISION Max; the antibody was identified as anti-Le(a). The overall sensitivity of the two automated instruments was the same as or higher than that of the semiautomated method. Carryover was not observed in antibody screening. CONCLUSIONS: The IH-500 and VISION Max instruments showed reliable results for ABO-RhD blood typing and unexpected antibody screening, and can be used clinically, with confidence, for pre-transfusion tests in the blood bank.
Automation ; Blood Banks* ; Blood Grouping and Crossmatching* ; Humans ; Mass Screening* ; Methods

To extract texture features from medical images, the approaches for multi-scale complexity and multi-scale fractal dimension were proposed in this paper. The extracted texture features were used in the medical image retrieval experiments. The complexity measurements used include permutation entropy and 2D-C0 complexity. The former is used to analyze one dimensional signal, and the latter is used to analyze two dimensional one. Comparison experiments were carried out between our approaches and others' approaches in some literatures. Preliminary experimental results show that our approaches can effectively describe the texture information of medical images. Furthermore, the image retrieval results are encouraging.
Automation ; Diagnostic Imaging ; Humans ; Information Storage and Retrieval ; methods ; Nonlinear Dynamics

This paper introduce how to combining the whole package automatic dispensing machine with intelligent storage cabinets at outpatient pharmacy. Furthermore, this paper introduce how to integrated this system with hospital information systems which can provide references for the construction of automatic hospital pharmacy in our country.
Automation ; methods ; Hospitals, General ; Medication Systems, Hospital ; Pharmacy Service, Hospital