Method and apparatus for quantitating surface-binding optical resonance profiles

1. An apparatus for quantitation of surface-binding optical resonance profiles comprising, in combination:

calibration module, said calibration module comprising:

calibration scan result fetcher for generating a calibration profile of a region of interest on a surface plasmon resonance chip being tested; and

calibration profile creation module for smoothing and subsampling the calibration profile to generate model calibration profiles for a plurality of regions of interest on the surface Plasmon resonance chip; and

fitting module, said fitting module comprising:

experimental scan result fetcher to obtain an experimental region of interest scan profile;

calibration profile fetcher to measure an angle shift between experimental region of interest scan profile and the model calibration profile; and

resonance shift determination module outputting resonance parameters related to the surface plasmon chip being tested.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein said calibration profile creation module further includes a curve smoother.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein said calibration profile creation module further includes a subsampler.

4. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein said calibration profile creation module further includes a curve smoother and a subsampler.

5. The apparatus of claim 1 , further including a resonance parameter calculator.

6. The apparatus of claim 5 , wherein the calculated resonance parameters are selected from the group consisting of estimated absolute resonance point, time of resonance minimum, diagnostic information, and quality information.

7. The apparatus of claim 1 , further including an instrument control and data acquisition module.

8. The apparatus of claim 7 , further including a test and support module.

9. A method for qualifying a surface plasmon resonance chip comprising:

obtaining a single golden calibration profile for the type of surface plasmon chip to be qualified, the golden calibration profile being based on a set of surface plasmon resonance profiles acquired from a plurality of surface plasmon chips;

obtaining at least one calibration result from a calibration scan of at least one Region of Interest of the surface plasmon chip to be tested;

comparing said at least one calibration result to said golden calibration profile to obtain at least one comparison result; and

determining whether said surface plasmon chip is suitable for use by applying selection criteria to said at least one comparison result.

10. The method of claim 9 , further including displaying chip qualification results to the user.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein determining whether the chip is suitable includes incrementing a bad region of interest (ROI) count.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein determining whether the chip is suitable includes storing a bad region of interest (ROI) number for display.

13. The method of claim 9 , wherein comparing the calibration includes initializing a fit module with a chip qualification parameter set.

14. The method of claim 9 , wherein obtaining a golden calibration profile further comprises averaging together the plurality of surface plasmon resonance profiles to generate the golden calibration profile.

15. The method of claim 14 , wherein obtaining a plurality of surface plasmon resonance profiles further comprises:

generating a surface plasmon resonance profile for a plurality of surface plasmon resonance chips;

determining a quantity of data points and a full width at half maximum (FWHM) value for each of the surface plasmon resonance profiles; and

assigning a surface plasmon resonance profile to the set of the surface plasmon resonance profiles when the quantity of data points and the full width at half maximum (FWHM) value each exceed a predetermined value.