FPGA-based bio-cybernetic system for lab-on-a-chip automation

In recent years, Lab-on-a-Chip technology has been widely applied to the pharmaceutical and eco-toxicity domains, together with the use of zebrafish as the model organism for performing fish embryo toxicity assay. However, the requirement of constant human attention and lack of fully automated systems have lead into low throughput and slow turnaround time for the experiments. In this paper, a novel FPGA-based bio-cybernetic system is designed to work with Lab-on-a-Chip devices in these experiments for handling zebrafish embryos, controlling chemical liquid perfusion, maintaining micro-environment and acquiring image data periodically for the analysis of embryo development. These functionalities have been demonstrated in the designed system by performing multiple 40-hour continuous experiments.