智慧整合感控數位微流體生物晶片佈局之最佳化

Abstract

在現代的醫療應用大多使用數位微流體生物晶片來做診斷和分析，像是 point-of-care (POC) 臨床診斷。由於在生物分析實驗的過程很容易有意外的分析錯誤，所以在分析過程中，我們需要一個可以觀測中間產物的偵測訊號來控制意外錯誤。因此，有感測器的智慧整合感控數位微流體生物晶片非常重要。然而，生物分析的正確性和準確度跟電極的使用次數有極大的關係，而電極的使用次數和模組佈局有相當大的關係。另外，針對智慧整合感控數位微流體生物晶片的特性，其中有一個需要考慮的實際限制，感測器限制，此限制可以降低感測器在觀測中間產物時，發生感測錯誤的機率。如果沒有考慮這個限制，將會導致極為嚴重的診斷錯誤。此篇論文題出了第一個在智慧整合感控數位微流體生物晶片的模組和感測器同時做佈局的方法，可以解決以上的問題。除了考慮以上所提到的兩個問題之外，我們同時也去考慮需要被觀測的中間產物的移動距離。

Digital microfluidic biochips maximize the possibilities in modern healthcare applications, such as point-of-care (POC) clinical diagnosis. Because of the error-prone biochemical experiments, we need to obtain the sensing feedback signal of monitoring the intermediate results. Thus, cyber-physical digital microfluidic biochips with sensor integration is essential. However, the correctness of bioassays is closely related to actuating times of electrodes, which should be taken care of during the module placement stage. Moreover, in cyber-physical digital microfluidic biochips, sensor constraint (i.e., no operation is allowed to pass through the location of a sensor except for the sensing droplet itself) in sensor planning should also be considered to avoid the sensing errors. Without addressing these issues, it will cause the wastage of samples and expensive reagents. Even worse, it can cause the serious disaster of clinical diagnosis error. To tackle this issue, this thesis presents the first module and sensor co-placement in cyber-physical digital microfluidic biochips while considering sensor constraint and minimizing actuating times of electrodes. The experimental results show that we can effectively minimize bioassay completion time and sensing distance.