Overview of the automation of embryo biopsy for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis

Embryonic biopsy routinely involves the removal of one or two blastomeres in the pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) procedure to determine the presence of a specific disease. The rapid development of the PGD technique and stem cell research has led to great demand for highly automated high precision equipment for cellular component micro-extraction. We first present a review of the existing and possible techniques for embryo biopsy. Additionally, this paper overviews the development of the overall automation of embryonic biopsy including the discussion of: automation steps and strategy embryo holding devices design and control of a piezoelectric-based cutter vision-based control. The present work proposes a new approach to transfer and immobilise biological cells. The unique configuration of fluidic channels is designed to increase cell mobility to overcome adhesion force at a low suction flow rate. Furthermore, a new simple model is proposed to describe the rate-dependent hysteresis for real-time compensation of non-linearities of piezoelectric cutter over wide range of frequency operation. The performance of the proposed visual-based controller is evaluated numerically. Finally, the preliminary numerical and experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the automated embryonic biopsy system.