Bio-inspired Routing in DMFB
Abstract
Digital Microfluidic Biochips (DMFB) has been evolved as a new generation of Lab-on-Chip device. This appears as a viable alternative to conventional benchtop laboratory process in the fields of point of care diagnostics, environmental toxicity monitoring and other biomedical applications. With increase in complexity, scalability and requirements of more precise control in microfluidic operations - simultaneous execution of complex bioassays within the same substrates poses a major challenge. Transportation of multiple droplets comprising complex bioassays within a 2D array faces the major issue of cross contamination. Poorly estimated route path and bad pre-scheduling may result in unwarranted cross overs resulting in faulty detection and dire wrong diagnostic consequences. In this work we used a swarm propagation based technique to resolve the cross contamination issues for parallel routing within a single 2D DMFB array. The proposed technique shows encouraging improvements in terms of arrival time as well as optimal contamination for enhanced routing performance.
Authors: Pranab Roy, Debajyoti Pal, Tanmoy Biswas, Rupam Bhattacharya, Hafizur Rahaman