Oxford Optronix announces latest release of ColCount software

Oxford Optronix introduce 3 year warranty

Oxford Optronix announces general availability of needle-encased tissue pO2 sensor.

December 2004

January 2007

Oxford Optronix is now shipping 'Large Area Sensors'.

Oxford Optronix announces that it is now shipping its latest range of unique Large Area (LAS) type tissue oxygen sensors. LAS sensors have a robust catheter-type construction which provide dissolved oxygen sensing over much larger areas/volumes of tissue whilst still maintaining a small, overall diameter in order to mitigate against potential tissue trauma.

Making the announcement, CEO Dr Andy Obeid said "The ability to be able to measure ‘integrated’ or ‘averaged’ oxygen values over much larger volumes/areas of tissue can be advantageous in situations where the tissue under investigation has a large degree of spatial heterogeneity in its oxygen content (i.e. where oxygen values can vary markedly from one micro-region to the next). One of the unique benefits of LAS sensor technology is to enable averaged or ‘global’ type tissue oxygen measurements to be obtained in a controlled way."

Another potential benefit of the LAS sensor is that the oxygen measurement takes place actually along the shaft of the catheter – NOT at the tip. The ability of the LAS sensor to measure tissue oxygen away from the site of insertion is considered to be advantageous in some situations as this is the region at which there will be maximal tissue trauma (due to mechanical insertion) and also the region at which the tissue is most occluded (due to mechanical compression).

Oxford Optronix are now shipping two versions of the LAS sensor; the 'LAS-1/O/E', which has an oxygen sampling area of 1mm2 and the 'LAS-8/O/E', which has an oxygen sampling area of 8mm2.

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March 2006

Oxford Optronix launches GelCount – an automated colony-counting system for counting and analysis of non-adherent cell colonies and spheriods in ‘3-D' media such as soft agar and methylcellulose.

Oxford Optronix today announced the arrival of GelCount; its latest cell colony counting system specifically developed for automated colony counting in difficult ‘3 D’ media such as soft agar and methylcellulose. For the first time, GelCount provides scientists with a dedicated and highly effective solution for counting mammalian cell colonies resulting from Soft Agar Assays, Clonogenic Assays, Survival Assays, Tumor Cloning Assays and Stem Cell Assays across a range of disciplines including Radiation Biology, Drug Discovery, Stem Cell Research and Toxicology

Making the announcement, Dr Andy Obeid, CEO of Oxford Optronix said "GelCount is in fact a complimentary device to ColCount that specifically addresses a vital niche in the automated colony counting market; namely the need to count both stained and unstained cell colonies growing in thick, gel-type media such as soft agar. From a product development perspective, this was an extremely challenging task and we had to adopt some rather clever engineering. But by combining high-resolution/high depth-of-field scanning with our proprietary digital image processing algorithms, our engineers have created a truly remarkable product that finally gives researchers a cost effective, high through-put alternative to the onerous and subjective task of manually counting colonies suspended in media layers."

To see more information on GelCount, click here.

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July 2005

Oxford Optronix launches Artefact Rejection Technology for its flagship range of laser Doppler blood perfusion monitors

Oxford Optronix today announced a very significant development in laser Doppler blood perfusion monitoring; the launch of a next-generation, signal processing engine that effectively rejects motion artefact noise in the blood flow signal. Artefact Rejection Technology (ART™) substantially reduces and in most cases, completely eliminates motion artefacts or ‘spikes’ in the blood flow data arising from sensor cable movement and/or sensor-to-tissue movement.

‘After many years of development and extensive testing, I’m thrilled that our engineers have finally advanced laser Doppler technology to the point where it can be used reliably in hitherto impossible ‘moving tissue’ blood flow monitoring applications’ said Dr Andy Obeid, CEO of Oxford Optronix. ‘This development places Oxford Optronix at the forefront of laser Doppler blood perfusion monitoring with a technology that is reliable, easy to use and effective even in the most challenging tissue monitoring environments. This is something researchers have been demanding for longer than I can remember. I’m proud that we can finally offer them a viable solution.'

ART™ will be a standard, no extra-cost, feature in all OxyFlo systems shipped from July 2005 onwards. To see how good ART™ is, click here.

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June 2005

Oxford Optronix announces latest release of ColCount software

Oxford Optronix announces its latest release of ColCount software (v4.3.1.2) that includes a novel, enhanced colony detection algorithm. Making the announcement, Sales Director, Dr. Michael Rau says ‘This new algorithm (CHARM Enhanced) was developed as a result of customer feedback and provides a much improved ability to resolve overlapping colonies and identify smaller colonies present in a mixed-size distribution. Oxford Optronix is very proud of its proactive approach to finding out what our customers want and this is another example of how we’ve developed a solution that is technically relevant and focussed on meeting our customers expectations’.

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May 2005

Oxford Optronix introduce 3 year warranty

Confident in the outstanding quality and durability of its products, Oxford Optronix is proud to announce that effective from the 1st May 2005, all its electronic instrumentation will be supplied with a free, three-year product warranty covering both parts and labour. Making the announcement, Oxford Optronix’ CEO Dr Andy Obeid said ‘We are delighted to be offering our customers comprehensive peace-of-mind and confidence in our products with this exceptional level of free warranty cover.’

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February 2005

Oxford Optronix announces general availability of needle-encased tissue pO2 sensor.

click to enlarge image

Oxford Optronix proudly presents the latest member of its expanding range of tissue vitality sensors with the addition of a robust, needle-encased variant of its established tissue pO2 sensor (NP/0). Describing the device, Oxford Optronix’ CEO Dr Andy Obeid says ‘The unique construction of this needle-type sensor enables measurements of tissue oxygenation to take place actually along the shaft of the needle – i.e. away from the site of maximal tissue trauma. The ability to measure oxygen in a less disturbed tissue microenvironment is of significant benefit to the researcher’

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