Hamachiyo Yuta, Shiro Chiharu, Nishikawa Hiroki, Tomiyama Hiroyuki, Yamashita Shigeru
Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University, Kusatsu 525-8577, Japan.
WITZ Corporation, Nagoya 460-0004, Japan.
Biosensors (Basel). 2025 Aug 3;15(8):500. doi: 10.3390/bios15080500.
In recent years, digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs), based on microfluidic technology, have attracted attention as compact and flexible experimental devices. DMFBs are widely applied in biochemistry and medical fields, including point-of-care clinical diagnostics and PCR testing. Among them, micro electrode dot array (MEDA) biochips, composed of numerous microelectrodes, have overcome the limitations of conventional chips by enabling finer droplet manipulation and real-time sensing, thus significantly improving experimental efficiency. While various studies have been conducted to enhance the utilization of MEDA biochips, few have considered the shape-dependent velocity characteristics of droplets in routing. Moreover, methods that do take such characteristics into account often face significant challenges in solving time. This study proposes a fast droplet routing method for MEDA biochips that incorporates shape-dependent velocity characteristics by utilizing the distance information to the target cell. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves approximately a 67.5% reduction in solving time compared to existing methods, without compromising solution quality.
近年来，基于微流控技术的数字微流控生物芯片（DMFBs）作为紧凑且灵活的实验设备受到了关注。DMFBs广泛应用于生物化学和医学领域，包括即时医疗临床诊断和PCR检测。其中，由众多微电极组成的微电极点阵列（MEDA）生物芯片，通过实现更精细的液滴操控和实时传感，克服了传统芯片的局限性，从而显著提高了实验效率。虽然已经进行了各种研究来提高MEDA生物芯片的利用率，但很少有人考虑液滴在路由中的形状依赖速度特性。此外，考虑到这些特性的方法在求解时间方面往往面临重大挑战。本研究提出了一种用于MEDA生物芯片的快速液滴路由方法，该方法通过利用到目标细胞的距离信息来纳入形状依赖速度特性。实验结果表明，与现有方法相比，该方法在不影响解质量的情况下，求解时间减少了约67.5%。
