Automated two stage detection and analyzer system in multipartitioned Digital Microfluidic Biochips

Digital Microfluidic Biochips (DMFB), a promising platform for Lab-on-chip systems are capable of automated biochemical analysis targeted for medical diagnostics and other biochemical applications. The inherent nature of reconfigurability and scalability enables the device to integrate multiple bioassay protocols within the same array for simultaneous execution. Each execution of Bioassay involves numerous microfluidic operations to be performed successfully within the DMFB. Optical Detection and analysis are one of the significant operations required to be performed in DMFB systems for conclusive diagnosis and testing of targeted parameters within the specified sample. In this paper we propose a new design for automated detection based analyzer system integrated with a multipartioned scalable DMFB for two stage confirmatory detection of multiple parameters for a given set of samples .Multiple bioassays are executed sequentially in two stages and the results are analyzed using an intelligent system with integrated memory containing precharacterized standard outputs. The design prototype is implemented on FPGA platform and the simulations and detection results for a set of specified bioassay protocols are found to be satisfactory and in conformance with conventional benchtop laboratory processes.