Design Of Image Flow Cytometry Based On A Microfluidic Chip

Image flow cytometry is a fast and accurate detecting instrument..It is used to detect biological cells in terms of the current statistics of the number or the detection of the statement of cells;especially it is more popular biological cell testing instrument in the current.But this instrument is expensive,bulky,complex and so it does not apply to the general biological laboratory to complete the cell observation and classification count and other normal tasks.So we need to design an image flow cytometry instrument to upgrade the function of ordinary biology microscope laboratoryThis paper designs a new microscope image flow cytometry(MMFC)based on a microfluidic chip.The MMFC has microfluidic chip for sample platform,the micro controller unit(MCU)for controlling sample platform moving,converting sample view.It can be combined with ordinary microscope to complete cell image automatic acquisition and has the realization of the outlines of the cells tracking,recognition and counting through the PC image processing algorithm and software.The system is sample saving,fast,accurate,low cost,and can upgrade the microscope of ordinary laboratories becoming image flow cytometry and overcome the shortcomings of existing commercial image flow cytometry which is expensive and inconvenient popularization and so on.The main content of this paper includes the design of the system,software and hardware testing and application:(1)The testing system is designed and it is set up according to the detection principle of the system.This system includes two parts;hardware and software.Among them,the hardware part is mainly composed of a microscope and a camera,a microfluidic chip,a stepper motor control module,mechanical structure and so on.The software part mainly includes the image processing software and the image receiving software.The image processing software is written by C++ language at VC++6.0 development platform,with the image processing,the image file management,the software interface and other multifunctional modules.(2)The test of the hardware part of the system is completed.It is mainly to test the mobile platform module which is controlled by the single chip microcomputer.During the test,the desired distance of the microfluidic chip and vision sample under microscope can be adjusted and determined by the eyepiece and objective amplification ratio,the number of stepping motor rotating circle and the screw thread pitch.According to the completion of calculation these parameters and experiment,the flexible and accurate movement effects of the sample are successfully obtained.(3)The test of the accuracy of the software part of the system is completed which is including counting test and classification results of different sizes of particles,the counting results of the red blood cell in human blood samples accuracy test and test of algal cell concentration detection function.The main function of the test of different size particles is to examine the ability of the system to detect the different size of the cell.The test of algae cells and blood cell samples reflects the accuracy of the system to detect and calculate the sample solution concentration and the biological significance of the system.Test results show that the system can quickly and accurately complete the tasks such as classification,counting,and concentration calculation.