in one embodiment the length and width of the template 16 is configured to fit on top of a transparent scanning surface of the scanner 14 such that at least one corner of the template 16 may be aligned with one corner of the scanning surface in this way lateral movement of the template 16 during scanning may be minimized thus when correspondingly configured test devices 20 are placed into respective windows 18 the template 16 allows the test devices 20 to remain in a fixed position within the target areas during scanning of the test devices 20 defining target areas for analysis allows imaging software to focus on those areas in the digital images generated by the scanner and treat other areas as background areas in this way the imaging software can more efficiently process the visual data that is present in the target areas and ignore irrelevant background data in one embodiment the target areas are defined by the boundary edges of the windows 18 and recognized by the scanning software during scanning in various embodiments the template 16 may be of different colors or combinations of colors to assist in optical analysis additionally the windows 18 may be cut in different shapes and sizes to conform to various types of test devices 20 in one embodiment the scanner 14 first scans the template 16 alone without any test devices 20 contained therein to generate a digital image of the.