A system and method employing optical disc drives for quantitative analysis of physical, chemical and biochemical parameters are provided. The system includes a robotic arm for transmitting a disc including at least one sensor spot through a variety of stations that include dipping the disc into a source of a compound, removing excess amounts of the source, optically scanning the disc, and discarding the disc. The optical drive may be a stand-alone reader in communication with an external computing device. The output of the optical scan may be transmitted from the optical scanner to the computing device via universal serial bus, Ethernet interface, or wireless connection.