In 2020, Gray Optics saw a surge in demand from manufacturers of COVID-19 point-of-care tests.
Founded in 2017, the Portland company develops advanced imaging technologies and optical systems for biomedical, life sciences and industrial applications.
With the pandemic, manufacturers of point-of-care tests, which provide disease detection and diagnosis within minutes, asked founder Daniel Gray and his team to design custom optical systems that are an integral part of the tests.
The challenge? Many rapid tests rely on fluorescence detection using a lens that must be precisely aligned, with regard to specifications such as field-of-view and depth-of-field, to a digital image sensor.
“The presence of COVID can be detected through fluorescence imaging: In simple terms, does the sample glow a specific color or not?” says Gray.