Plate reader - Definition and Overview

Plate readers are laboratory instruments designed to detect biological, chemical or physical events in samples stored in microtiter plates.

These devices typically use optical and/or computer vision techniques to evaluate the contents of the microtiter plate wells. An ELISA plate reader, for example, is used to measure the intensity of the colors formed in each wells. ELISPOT plate readers are used to count the colored spots that are formed in the course of ELISPOT assays. Using these plate readers can eliminate (or at least, help reduce) the amount of human subjectivity which goes into evaluating the plate contents.