Path planning in automated manipulation of biological cells with optical tweezers

Optical tweezers are a unique tool for manipulating neutral particles in micro/nano scale and have wide applications in biological and physical fields. However, the majority of tasks with optical tweezers are carried out manually at present time. The manual operation is incompetent in dynamic environment. Automated manipulation of micro/nano particles with optical tweezers can improve both the efficiency and the accuracy of the manipulation especially in dynamic environment, and exhibits great potential in many applications such as chromosome section manipulation in cell development. In this paper, we focus our attentions on key technologies associated with the tweezers operation, namely path-planning and image processing technologies applied to the operation of one single beam optical trap to manipulate biological cells automatically. With the path planning algorithm, the cells can be moved with avoidance of obstacles at the least movement cost, which ensures the efficiency and safety of manipulation. An experimental setup is also introduced, which allows positioning of single cell and transportation of the cell with nanometer precision.