A Cell Culture Real-time Monitoring And Data Acquisition System

Cell culture is a commonly used biological experimental technique.The research and application of cytology,virology,and immunology often require large-scale culture of cell in vitro.When cell culture is performed,it is usually observed at regular intervals in order to have a good knowledge of the growth status of the cell,the consumption and evaporation of the culture solution.In the traditional biological cell culture process,people have to do these works: monitoring the consumption of culture fluids and evaporation of water;recording the growth curve of cell and cell’s morphology.In most cases,staff members are required to work day and night.This monitoring method that totally relies on artificial not only consumes a lot of manpower and material resources,but also has low efficiency of people’s work when sampling cultured cell for counting and observing cell’s morphological,etc.It also has the potential to contaminate cell culture,and it also wastes a certain amount of cell as well as exists the risk of misoperation.In the cell culture process,the pursuit of fully automatic,non-invasive and non-contact automatic monitoring will not only make the process of cell culture more reliable,but also save costs and increase the cycle of cell culture.In order to achieve non-destructively,real-time and contactlessly monitoring the water content of nutrient,the nutrient’s consumption and collecting the cell’s growth curve,this subject has realized a low-cost,convenient and miniaturized cell culture real-time monitoring and data acquisition system.The system uses the principle of microwave and dielectric spectroscopy.It does not require being contact with cell directly and it does not require labeling cell.It can achieve monitoring in real time.The system is easy to operate and has the characteristics of miniaturization.It does not require expensive and bulky measurements such as Vector network analyzer and other instruments during testing.The research content of this article is centered on three parts: monitoring circuit,data acquisition and testing.This system includes:(1)Sensing circuit which is designed to reflect changes of the material in the petri dish in real time;(2)Dividing power splitter that is designed to ensure the conditions of experimental part being the same as the comparison;(3)The rectifier circuit(the microwave signal is transferred into a DC voltage signal)which is designed to facilitate the test;(4)Dielectric spectrum acquisition module which includes the hardware circuit and software control program.The system tests include:(1)the test of the power splitter,microstrip inductor,rectifier circuit,and acquisition module.The test results show that they can all work properly.(2)the function test of the entire system,a certain amount of water was added into the petri dish and is monitored by the system in real time.The test results showed that the system can automatically monitor the consumption and evaporation of the culture fluid in real time.