A new digital analyzer for optically detected samples in digital microfluidic biochips

Abstract

Electrowetting based digital microfluidic biochips are developed recently as an alternative platform for conventional laboratory methods in advanced biochemical applications. With the advantages of portability, cost minimization, higher precision combined with better throughput - these devices are finding increasing applications in the areas of point of care diagnostics, parallel immunoassays, drug design, DNA sequencing as well as environmental toxicity monitoring and others. Advanced design automation strategies are developed to facilitate multiple bioassay operation to be enabled simultaneously on a single microfluidic biochip. On completion of these Bioassay protocols the detection is enabled at the optical detection sites within the chip area itself. In this work we have proposed a unique design of an automated droplet detection analyzer to be coupled with the targeted biochip for providing detailed analysis result based on the data acquired through optical detection. This newly proposed design not only enables the detection analysis of samples based on predefined characterized results - but also enhances the process of integration of multiple biochips to perform different set of test sequences on different biochips on the basis of these analysis results obtained in the proposed analyzer. The architecture, synthesis and simulation of the proposed droplet analyzer for signals obtained from Blood oxygen analysis, each for multiple samples in a single biochip has been displayed in this paper - and the results are found to be quite encouraging. © 2012 IEEE.