Effective host-local system architecture for PCR chips is presented. The functions required for the control of the chips and their partitioning into the host and the local system are qualitatively analyzed. The results indicated that, most functions can be resided in the host to deliver the benefits on the development period, the system cost, and the maintenance. The control system was implemented with PC as the host and the local system was connected by USB interface, obtaining the superior development and the GUI design environment. A PCB-based PCR chip example was constructed and tested to verify the proposed system.

Template matching method is presented to identify the peaks from the scanned signals of lateral flow immunoassay strips. The template is composed of two pulses separated by the distance of the control and the target ligand line in the assay, and is convolved with the scanned signal to deliver the maximum at the center of the two peaks. The peak regions were identified with the predefined distances from the center. Glycosylated haemoglobin immunoassay strips and fluorescent strip readers from Boditechmed Inc. were tested to estimate the lot and reader variations of the concentration measurands. The results showed the robustness of the propose method.