TY - GEN
T1 - An automated robotic system for high-speed microinjection of Caenorhabditis elegans
AU - Dong, Xianke
AU - Song, Pengfei
AU - Liu, Xinyu
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 IEEE.
PY - 2015/6/29
Y1 - 2015/6/29
N2 - The tiny nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has long been a popular model organism for genetic, developmental, and biochemical studies in which worm microinjection plays a critical role. This paper presents an automated robotic system for high-speed injection of C. elegans with an efficiency more than 10 times faster than that of a proficient injection technician. To facilitate the injection process, a multilayer, hydraulically-controlled polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic device is developed to rapidly load, immobilize, flush, sort and collect individual worms. In addition, a newly proposed contact detection algorithm is adopted to find the optimal injection position along the z axis within the microscope view field. The direction and location of the needle tip are identified online based on an effective image processing algorithm. According to continuous injection of 40 worms, our system is able to perform worm injection at a speed of 6.6 worms per minute with a pre-sorting success rate of 77.5% (post sorting: 100%). The superior performance provided by the system will significantly facilitate large-scale transgenic studies and biomolecule screening on C. elegans.
AB - The tiny nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has long been a popular model organism for genetic, developmental, and biochemical studies in which worm microinjection plays a critical role. This paper presents an automated robotic system for high-speed injection of C. elegans with an efficiency more than 10 times faster than that of a proficient injection technician. To facilitate the injection process, a multilayer, hydraulically-controlled polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic device is developed to rapidly load, immobilize, flush, sort and collect individual worms. In addition, a newly proposed contact detection algorithm is adopted to find the optimal injection position along the z axis within the microscope view field. The direction and location of the needle tip are identified online based on an effective image processing algorithm. According to continuous injection of 40 worms, our system is able to perform worm injection at a speed of 6.6 worms per minute with a pre-sorting success rate of 77.5% (post sorting: 100%). The superior performance provided by the system will significantly facilitate large-scale transgenic studies and biomolecule screening on C. elegans.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84938279293&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ICRA.2015.7139298
DO - 10.1109/ICRA.2015.7139298
M3 - Conference Proceeding
AN - SCOPUS:84938279293
T3 - Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
SP - 996
EP - 1001
BT - 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2015
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2015
Y2 - 26 May 2015 through 30 May 2015
ER -