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Development of a five degree-of-freedom robot for the manipulation of biological cells

Studies of individual cells via microscopy and microinjection are a key component
in research on gene functions, cancer, stem cells, and reproductive technology. As
biomedical experiments become more complex, there is an urgent need for robotic
systems to: improve cell manipulation, increase throughput, reduce lost cells, and
improve reaction detection. Automation of these tasks using visual servoing creates
significant benefits for biomedical laboratories including repeatability of experiments,
higher throughput, and a controlled environment capable of operating 24 hours a day.
In this work the design and development of a new five degree-of-freedom biomanipulator
designed for single-cell microinjection, is described. The biomanipulator employs
three degrees of linear motion and two degrees of rotation. This provides the ability
to manipulate/micro-inject cells at varying orientations, thereby increasing flexibility
in dealing with complex operations such as injecting clustered cells. The capability
of the biomanipulator is shown with preliminary experimental results using mouse
myeloma cells.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:uvic.ca/oai:dspace.library.uvic.ca:1828/1263
Date20 November 2008
CreatorsSakaki, Kelly D.R.
ContributorsPark, E.J., Dechev, N
Source SetsUniversity of Victoria
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsAvailable to the World Wide Web

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