A UK pharmaceutical development company was so impressed with the performance of its Biospace Beta Imager 2000 from LabLogic Systems that it invested in a second just a year later
The real-time auto-radiography imager cut tritium imaging time dramatically, creating capacity for 12 times as many studies as were possible with the homogenate ligand binding and film methods previously used.
It also captured more anatomical data about the locations where ligands bind on brain receptors.
The technology of the Beta Imager superseded lengthy and often impractical assay development and troubleshooting processes that involved waiting as long as six months, sometimes only to discover that an experiment had failed.
Demand was such that before the second imager arrived staff from other departments wanting to use the Beta Imager were having to book six months in advance.
Up to 500 times faster than film, the Biospace Beta Imager 2000 records every beta particle and generates accurate images on screen in real time at very low levels of radioactivity.
In the case of tritium, the detection threshold is just 0.007cpm/mm2 for samples up to 20cm by 25cm.
The imager also detects 14C, 32P, 35S and 125I and can accommodate a wide range of sample formats, including whole body sections, receptor binding measurements, brain and other tissue sections, TLC plates, gels and membranes.
An optical zoom makes it possible to achieve spatial resolution down to 50um at the lowest position.
Among the features of the accompanying software is an exclusive dual labelling capability that simultaneously detects tritium and another isotope of different energy in the same sample.