血液自動分析機反応容器内の液温の安定化

抄録

An automated blood analyzer pours blood serum extracted from an examinee's blood and a reagent into a reaction vessel, mixes them, and measures the quantity of the product generated by chemical reaction in the liquid with an absorptiometer. As the temperature of the reaction liquid must be kept at human body temperature (about 37℃) due to the nature of the measurement, a thermostatic chamber is provided inside. In the thermostatic chamber, the temperature of the reaction liquid must be raised to 37℃ reliably and quickly. In this study, the design of the thermostatic chamber was optimized by means of simulation to ensure measurement accuracy and to reduce measuring time. An evaluation by the standard S/N ratio was performed with shapes and dimensions of the parts of the thermostatic chamber treated as control factors, time elapsed after the reagent was poured into the reaction vessel as the signal factor, and temperature of the reaction liquid as the output. Results showed that with the optimal design, time required for the reaction liquid temperature to reach 37℃ was reduced to about one third and variation of the reaction liquid was reduced to one seventeenth as compared with a set of comparative conditions.