Microarray Scanner

Products - Microarray Instruments - Colorimetric Scanner

The ArrayIt® SpotWare™ Colorimetric Microarray Scanner opens up a new facet of microarray technology. An excellent complement to your current fluorescence scanning technology, our Colorimetric system enables the use of a full spectrum of colored labels including the products of horseradish peroxidase (HRP), alkaline phosphatase (AP), gold-silver developers, myriad secondary antibodies, and all other labeling systems that produce pigmented reaction products. The SpotWare™ Colorimetric Microarray Scanner accommodates 12 standard 25 x 76 microarray substrate slides for high-speed colorimetric scanning of DNA and protein microarrays for research and diagnostics.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Quality Control
Product Description
Technical Assistance
Easy Scan (Short Protocol)
Easy Scan (Complete Protocol)
Software Shareware
Installation Guide
Troubleshooting Tips
Recommended Products
Ordering Information
Warranty

Introduction
Congratulations on taking a big step towards improving your microarray research. This booklet contains a complete set of protocols outlining the steps required to use the SpotWare™ Colorimetric Microarray Scanner for acquiring microarray images from protein, DNA and other types of microarrays that use colorimetric labeling and detection schemes.

Quality Control
TeleChem assures the performance of these products, and the finest scientific research went into their development.

Product Description
The SpotWare™ Colorimetric Microarray Scanner is a high performance detection system at an incredibly affordable price. Users will appreciate the following system features:

Ultra-sensitive CCD line scanning technology
Adjustable scanning resolution: 5, 10, 20 and 50 µm
Standard substrate format: 25 x 76 x 1 mm
Reads up to 12 microarrays using the 12-Position Substrate Slide Bay
Standard 16-bit TIFF file format with 0-65,536 intensity values
Rainbow palette data display for easy viewing
Adjustable gain function provides an additional 3 logs (1000-fold) sensitivity
Total dynamic range: > 7 logs (10,000,000-fold)
Images importable into any standard microarray analysis software package
Intuitive graphical user interface
Operating system: Windows XP
Small instrument size conserves bench space
Broad spectrum white light source reads any colorimetric label
Compatible with HRP, AP, gold-silver, and other labels
Unique light path produces zero background with white membrane substrates
Scan area: 25 x 76 mm with separate barcode detection capability
Scan speed: 1.0 cm² in 30 seconds at 10 µm resolution
User-specified experimental notes attached to each data file
Instrument size (L, W, H): 46 x 27 x 11.5 cm
Instrument weight: 3.1 kg
Total set up time less than 30 minutes
Perfect complement to your existing fluorescent scanning system
Reads DNA, RNA, protein, antigen, antibody and other types of microarrays
Perfect system for both research and diagnostics applications

Product Contents

SpotWare™ Colorimetric Microarray Scanner (110V or 220V)
SpotWare™ Power Supply with Voltage-Appropriate Cable
SpotWare™ USB High-Speed Data Communications Cable
SpotWare™ 12-Position Substrate Slide Bay
SpotWare™ USB Software Key
Computer with Pre-Installed SpotWare™ Controller and Image Acquisition Software
Computer Keyboard
Computer Mouse
Computer Power Cord with Voltage-Appropriate Cable

Technical Assistance
Please contact us if you have any comments, suggestions, or if you need technical assistance. By electronic mail: arrayit@arrayit.com (under the subject heading, please type ArrayIt technical assistance). By telephone: (408) 744-1331, Monday–Friday PST 8:30am - 5:30 PM. Please remember that we want to hear about your successes!

Figure 1. Protein microarray manufactured using the ArrayIt® Protein Microarray Platform and detected with the ArrayIt® SpotWare™ Colorimetric Microarray Scanner. Antibodies were diluted in 1X Protein Printing Buffer, printed in quintuplicate onto SuperProtein Substrates using a SpotBot® Personal Microarrayer, incubated with patient sera, stained with a secondary antibody conjugated to Alkaline Phosphatase (AP), and developed with an AP Developing Kit. Scans were performed at Gain setting 1.0 and 10 µm Resolution. Data was provided courtesy of Dr. Stewart J. Lebrun, Ph.D.

Figure 2. Shown is the main software window of the graphical user interface. The scanned substrate image (left) appears in the scan window and is coded to a rainbow palette for simplified viewing. The user can pre-scan the entire substrate or a specified area (bottom left). Users can enter experimental notes into a text window (top right). The scanner settings (middle right) include the scan area coordinates (x, y), file size (MB), scan resolution (µm), scan gain (0.1-100), and a Scan button. The pre-scan intensity window (bottom right) indicates the scan gains and an intensity histogram coded to a rainbow palette. A “screen shot” of the options window is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. “Screen shot” of the options menu from Figure 2. The user may specify the image type as a standard 16-bit grayscale in standard black and white with the spots as light spots on a dark background (default standard in the microarray field), as a rainbow palette with intensities coded to different colors, or as an inverted black and white image with the spots appearing as dark spots on a light background. Notes typed into this section such as “SpotWare Scanner” and other information is stored with each TIFF.

Easy Scan (Short Protocol)

Install software and hardware (see Installation Guide).
Open the SpotWare™ software by double-clicking the desktop icon.
Place a colorimetric microarray in the upper right corner of the scanner template (spots facing down).
Click “Pre-Scan All” to perform a quick scan of the entire microarray.
Mouse out an area and click “Pre-Scan Selection” to pre-scan a defined region.
Set desired Scan Gain and Resolution using the drop down menus.
Enter user comments in the “Notes” text window.
Click the “Scan” button to scan at the designated Gain and Resolution.
Click “Save” to save the image or “Discard” to start again.

Easy Scan (Complete Protocol)

Install software and hardware (see Installation Guide). The basic steps are as follows. Remove the SpotWare™ Colorimetric Microarray Scanner from the box and place it on the desk or laboratory bench. Make certain to unlock the transportation lock on the back of the instrument (see Fig. 7). Insert the AC power adapter and USB instrument cable into the computer and scanner. Insert the USB key into a USB port on the computer. Install the software.
Open the SpotWare™ software by double-clicking the desktop icon. Double click on the icon that is automatically generated on the desktop after installation of the software and drivers. The intuitive SpotWare™ graphical user interface (GUI) will appear on the desktop as shown in Fig. 2. Familiarize yourself with the software settings.
Place a colorimetric microarray in the upper right corner of the scanner template (spots facing down). Lift the scanner lid and place the microarray substrate directly against the glass surface of the scanner deck. If you are using TeleChem substrates with chamfered corners, the chamfer should be positioned in the upper left corner of the substrate locator template directly against the flat top edge of the template. Future software additions will allow scanning from the 12 template locations. Make sure the glass deck of the scanner is clean and free of fingerprints and dust. Microarray Cleanroom Gloves should be used at all times when handling and scanning microarrays. The substrate locator template can be lifted off the deck for cleaning if necessary. If removed, make certain to replace the template in the correct orientation, with the flat sides facing upward and the finger holes facing downward.
Click “Pre-Scan All” to perform a quick scan of the entire microarray. With the colorimetric microarray facing downward on the glass scanner deck, click the “Pre-Scan All” icon to perform a quick scan of the entire microarray. The Pre-Scan mode will produce a low-resolution (50 µm) image of the entire microarray in approximately 10 seconds, and the image will appear in the Scan Area window. The Pre-Scan image allows the user to rapidly locate the signal areas and set the scan Gain to the correct sensitivity. The maximum scan area is 25 x 76 mm, sufficient to cover the entire surface of a standard 1 x 3” substrate.
Mouse out an area and click “Pre-Scan Selection” to scan a defined region. Using the Pre-Scan image as a guide, use the computer mouse to define a sub-region corresponding to the printed microarray, and press the “Pre-Scan Selection” to generate a pre-scan image of the selected region. The enlarged image will appear in the scan window. Using the computer mouse, adjust the Pre-Scan Intensity bar from 0.1 to 100 to adjust the scan gain and produce greater or lesser sensitivity. Adjusting the Intensity bar will change the appearance of the image, but not the true scanner sensitivity. Use the Intensity bar to determine the desired scanner sensitivity, and use the Scan Gain (see #6) to adjust the true instrument sensitivity prior to acquiring a high-resolution image with the “Scan” button.
Set desired Scan Gain and Resolution using the drop down menus. Using the computer mouse, adjust the Scan Gain and Resolution settings on the right side of the “Scanner Settings”. For most applications, the Gain should be adjusted so that the most intense microarray spots produce nearly saturated values, and all other spots produce sub-saturating signals. The Gain can also be set at a very high setting to detect faint signals, though intense spots will be outside the linear range at these settings. The histogram to the right of the Gain bar (lower right) can be used to determine the intensity distribution of signals on the microarray and to select the desired Gain. The histogram tallies all of the pixel intensities in the image and codes them to a rainbow palette below the histogram, with white and black signals representing the strongest (e.g. 65,536) and weakest (e.g. 0) signals, respectively. The Scan Gain setting in the drop down menu determines the final scanning sensitivity. Changing the “Pre-Scan Intensity” using the vertical Gain bar changes the APPEARANCE of the Pre-Scanned image, but NOT the final image obtained when using the “Scan” button. For example, if the Pre-Scan Intensity shows a value of 7 and the Scan Gain shows 1, a Scan Gain value of 1 will be used to acquire the final image. With respect to Resolution, be certain to use a setting compatible with the spot diameter or feature size. Resolution can be set at 5, 10, 20 or 50 µm settings, and a good guide is to use a resolution setting that gives 10 pixels per spot diameter such that 500, 200, 100 and 50 µm spots would use 50, 20, 10 and 5 µm resolution settings, respectively. Remember that a 2-fold increase in resolution produces a 4-fold increase file size (MB). Scan resolution should be used carefully to prevent the accumulation of excessively large files.

Figure 4. A “screen shot” of the SpotWare™ software, showing a colorimetric microarray image acquired using the “Pre-Scan Selection” at Intensity Gain 1.0. The microarray used in this scan was provided courtesy of Dr. Stewart Lebrun, Ph.D.

Figure 5. A “screen shot” showing the same Pre-Scan Selection as in Figure 4, but at Scan Gain 7.0. The increase in signal intensity is clearly visible, though the background noise remains low. The microarray used in this scan was provided courtesy of Dr. Stewart Lebrun, Ph.D.

Enter user comments in the “Notes” text window. This text window allows users to enter experimental notes of interest including types of elements and probes, hybridization and reaction conditions, labeling procedures, manufacturing details, clinical data, and other experimental parameters. Notes typed into this window are saved and imbedded in the file look up table after the scan is completed and saved. To access the Notes in a saved file, place the mouse curser over the file icon and the notes will appear.
Click the “Scan” button to scan at the designated Gain and Resolution. Prior to scanning, be certain to type the experimental details into the “Notes” text window, and make certain that the Resolution and Scan Gain are set as desired. The portion of the microarray selected for scanning is indicated as X and Y coordinates on the left side of the “Scanner Settings” section. A particular scan area can also be selected using the toggle buttons on the right side of each the four X and Y coordinate boxes. Scanning proceeds at a rate of 1.0 cm² per 30 seconds at a resolution of 10 µm. The entire 25 x 76 mm substrate can be scanned in 170 seconds at a resolution of 10 µm. Please note that a 2-fold increase in Resolution produces a 4-fold increase in scan time. A scan at 5-µm resolution of a 1.0-cm² area requires 2 min (compared to 30 sec for the 10 µm setting).
Click “Save” to save the image or “Discard” to start again. Once an image is scanned a new graphic appears on the screen as shown in Fig. 6. Click “Save” if you wish to save the image or “Discard” to dispose of the images and start again. Images are saved in standard 16-bit Tagged Image File Format (TIFF), and can be imported into any standard microarray quantitation software package. Bar code and Pre-Scan image data are also saved with each TIFF. The Scanned image files also include all of the hardware settings used to acquire the image including scan area coordinates, resolution, gain, and other settings. Some image analysis packages such as ImageJ http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/ and UTHSCSA ImageTool Version 3.0 (http://ddsdx.uthscsa.edu/dig/itdesc.html) display all three images when opening a SpotWare™ file, though most microarray quantitation packages open only the high-resolution TIFF.

Figure 6. Streptavidin conjugated to alkaline phosphatase can be detected using the APK microarray detection kit. Alkaline phosphatase conjugation can also be done directly using a variety of commercially available kits. Contact us at arrayit@arrayit.com for more details.

Software for Microarray Image Analysis
ImageJ http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/ Some microarray analysis software programs have specific lookup tables for their tif files, Image J can be used to make the 16-bit tif files generated by SpotWare compatible with certain programs.

Image Tool http://ddsdx.uthscsa.edu/dig/itdesc.html UTHSCSA ImageTool (IT) is a free image processing and analysis program for Microsoft Windows 9x, Windows ME or Windows NT. IT can acquire, display, edit, analyze, process, compress, save and print gray scale and color images. IT can read and write over 22 common file formats including BMP, PCX, TIF, GIF and JPEG. Image analysis functions include dimensional (distance, angle, perimeter, area) and gray scale measurements (point, line and area histogram with statistics).

TIGR. The ™4 suite of tools consists of four major applications, Microarray Data Manager (MADAM), TIGR_Spotfinder, Microarray Data Analysis System (MIDAS), and Multiexperiment Viewer (MeV), as well as a Minimal Information About a Microarray Experiment (MIAME)-compliant MySQL database, all of which are freely available to the scientific research community at TIGR's Software Download Site. Although these software tools were developed for two-color microarrays, many of the components can be adapted to single-color formats including GeneChips® from Affymetrix. See the following link for more information: http://www.tigr.org/software/tm4/.

ProMAT (http://www.pnl.gov/statistics/ProMAT/index.htm)takes microarray data (the output of microarray image analysis such as SpotFinder) where some arrays are treated with standards of known antigen concentration and some arrays are treated with samples of unknown concentration. ProMAT fits standard curves to the standards data to relate spot fluorescence to concentration. ProMAT also calculates and outputs confidence bounds on these standard curves. The tool then uses the standard curves to predict antigen concentrations for the unknown samples, along with prediction intervals.

BRB ArrayTools. BRB-ArrayTools assist in the analysis of microarray data and was developed by professional statisticians with extensive experience in the design and analysis of microarrays. Implemented as an Excel add-in, BRB-ArrayTools provides a user-friendly interface and a flexible data import function suitable for a range of formats. The program can be used for non-commercial purposes free-of-charge. Learn more about the features associated with BRB-ArrayTools at the following site: http://linus.nci.nih.gov/BRB-ArrayTools.html

Cluster and TreeView. Cluster and TreeView are an integrated set of programs for analyzing and visualizing the results of complex microarray experiments, written by Michael Eisen: http://rana.lbl.gov/EisenSoftware.htm.

Jexpress. J-Express is a java application for the analysis of gene expression data from microarray experiments. It is programmed for the java runtime environment 1.2, which is available for most operating systems. Bjarte Dysvik and Inge Jonassen of the bioinformatics research group at the Department of Informatics at UoB developed J-Express: http://www.ii.uib.no/~bjarted/jexpress/

ArrayQuest enables browser-based implementation of DNA microarray data analysis programs that can be executed on a Linux-based platform. Importantly, ArrayQuest is a platform that will facilitate the distribution and implementation of new analysis algorithms and is therefore of use to both developers of analysis applications as well as users. ArrayQuest is freely available for use at http://proteogenomics.musc.edu/arrayquest.html

Installation Guide
Click here to view the installation guide.

Figure 7. Shown is a 125-µm microarray spot scanned at different Resolution settings. A microarray was manufactured on a SuperProtein hydrophobic membrane coated substrate using SMP4 pins and a SpotBot®. The microarray was processed and the protein spots were developed using an Alkaline Phosphatase (AP) Kit. The AP spots were scanned four successive times with the SpotWare™ Colorimetric Microarray Scanner operating at 5, 10, 20 and 50 µm Resolution, respectively. The TIFF files of the 125-µm spot (panels from left to right) clearly reveal the different scan Resolutions.

Troubleshooting Tips
1. Insufficient image intensity

Increase the scanner Gain

2. Excessive file size

Decrease the scanner Resolution

3. Software fails to operate

Make sure the purple USB key is inserted into the computer USB port

4. Software aborts

Do not adjust the Pre-Scan Intensity until the Pre-Scan image appears

Scientific Publications
Click on the links to view recent scientific publications featuring ArrayIt® brand microarray products for colorimetric microarray experimentation.

Ordering Information

Product

Description

Catalog ID

Price (US dollars)*

SpotWare™ Colorimetric Microarray Scanner, 110V

ArrayIt® Colorimetric Microarray Scanner with 5, 10, 20 and 50 µm scan resolution, adjustable gain, 16-bit data file output and intuitive graphical interface, ideal for all standard 25 x 76 mm substrate slide microarrays containing a white coating such as nitrocellulose and pigmented microarray spots derived from alkaline phosphatase, HRP and other labeling systems for DNA and protein microarrays. Highly affordable colorimetric scanner for research and diagnostics. Computer, keyboard and mouse included with every system, 110 volt domestic version.

SPW110

$4,284.50

SpotWare™ Colorimetric Microarray Scanner, 220V

ArrayIt® Colorimetric Microarray Scanner with 5, 10, 20 and 50 µm scan resolution, adjustable gain, 16-bit data file output and intuitive graphical interface, ideal for all standard 25 x 76 mm substrate slide microarrays containing a white coating such as nitrocellulose and pigmented microarray spots derived from alkaline phosphatase, HRP and other labeling systems for DNA and protein microarrays. Highly affordable colorimetric scanner for research and diagnostics. Computer, keyboard and mouse included with every system, 220 volt overseas version.

SPW220

$4,394.50

*For the most current pricing information, technical assistance, and shipping schedules please contact us by email arrayit@arrayit.com, telephone 408-744-1331, FAX 408-744-1711, or click on the Purchase buttons to proceed directly to the Shop Site.

*International pricing may vary as much as 30% (or more depending on country) due to import duties, stocking fees and technical support.

Warranty
ArrayIt® brand products have been developed scientifically, and are sold for research purposes. Extreme care and exact attention should be practiced in the use of the materials described herein. All ArrayIt® brand products are subject to extensive quality control and are guaranteed to perform as described when used properly. Any problems with any ArrayIt® brand product should be reported to TeleChem immediately. TeleChem's liability is limited to the replacement of the product, or a full refund. Any misuse of this product is the full responsibility of the user, and TeleChem makes no warranty or guarantee under such circumstances.