Title: Overview of the automation of embryo biopsy for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis

Authors: Issam M. Bahadur; James K. Mills

Addresses: Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, 5 King's College Road, Ontario M5S 3G8, Canada. ' Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, 5 King's College Road, Ontario M5S 3G8, Canada

Abstract: Embryonic biopsy routinely involves the removal of one or two blastomeres in the pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) procedure to determine the presence of a specific disease. The rapid development of the PGD technique and stem cell research has led to great demand for highly automated high precision equipment for cellular component micro-extraction. We first present a review of the existing and possible techniques for embryo biopsy. Additionally, this paper overviews the development of the overall automation of embryonic biopsy including the discussion of: 1) automation steps and strategy 2) embryo holding devices 3) design and control of a piezoelectric-based cutter 4) vision-based control. The present work proposes a new approach to transfer and immobilise biological cells. The unique configuration of fluidic channels is designed to increase cell mobility to overcome adhesion force at a low suction flow rate. Furthermore, a new simple model is proposed to describe the rate-dependent hysteresis for real-time compensation of non-linearities of piezoelectric cutter over wide range of frequency operation. The performance of the proposed visual-based controller is evaluated numerically. Finally, the preliminary numerical and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the automated embryonic biopsy system.

Keywords: embryo biopsy; pre-implantation genetic diagnosis; PGD; piezoelectric cutters; hysteresis; holding devices; visual control; cellular component micro-extraction; machine vision; biological cells; adhesion force; low suction flow rate.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMA.2011.045252

International Journal of Mechatronics and Automation, 2011 Vol.1 No.3/4, pp.201 - 212

Received: 28 Feb 2011
Accepted: 29 Oct 2011

Published online: 26 Mar 2015 *

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