DVD diagnostic software for reading disc-based bioassays, a comparative study

Compact disc (CD) technology-based bioassays have been developed as novel point-of-care (POC) tools for various applications in chemical analysis and biomedical diagnosis. Herein we investigate the accuracy of screening disc-based bioassays with standard optical drives of ordinary desktop/notebook computers with free DVD diagnostic software. In particular, we have compared the performance of three free online DVD diagnostic software programs: PlexUtilities, Kprobe and Optical Drive Control (ODC), first with arrays of mm-size ink dots and then with biotin-streptavidin binding assays. We have confirmed that the PIF (parity inner failure) number is related to the size of the ink spots, while the PIF density (integrated PIF counts per unit area) is proportional to the optical darkness ratio (ODR) of the spots. The reading results with a biotin-streptavidin binding assay prepared on a standard DVD-R further prove the accuracy of quantitation with all three types of disc diagnostic software programs.