Compact Vision System Design and Application on a PDMS Chip

This paper presents two compact vision systems to be assembled with a PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) chip, which were fabricated to achieve living-cell-manipulations such as positioning, cutting, sizing, etc., for bioplant project. The first prototype vision system with sufficient magnification and image resolution has been designed to be embedded into PDMS chip. A second system with a commercially available small size and light-weight microscope unit has also been prototyped to be integrated under microfluidic channel. Images taken with these monitoring systems are processed to determine the position and the size of an egg-cell in a microchannel. The accurate measurement of these parameters is important for the success of our planned cell-manipulations, while the size and weight of the total systems are decreased to provide portability and compatibility.