31 accepted papers
Spatially resolved single-cell analysis of plant root tissues requires isolating target cells while preserving their original three-dimensional tissue context, which remains challenging due to microscopic size, structural fragility, and dense spatial distribution. This article presents an automated
We developed a microscopic cell/tissue extraction device that employed a translational/rotational piezoelectric impact drive mechanism (Piezo IDM). To perform the correlation between gene expression and localized tissue sample at the micrometer scale, the system inserted a knife-edged glass capillar…
This study proposes a novel strategy for cross-scale position of robotic micromanipulation. The strategy utilizes multiple-scale augmented reality (AR) markers for locating the robotic manipulator on different scales. The macro-marker (3.0 cm-per side, 5 mm×5 mm each square) is applied to position t
Between 1999 and 2020, gastrointestinal cancers were responsible for over three million deaths, emphasizing the critical role of minimally invasive surgical techniques like Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection (ESD) in managing such life-threatening conditions. ESD, which dissects the connective tissue
This study proposes a novel movable microfluidic chip in which a microfluidic chip is integrated into a robotic manipulator for manipulating oocytes. The microfluidic device has the ability to release a single oocyte with a gap effect. The robotic manipulator can control the position of the microflu…
Microswimmers have significant potential for medical applications such as long-term on-demand medication, painless microscale surgery, and so on. The outstanding challenge is to realize power supply, propulsion, and steering mechanisms suitable for operations within the human body and microscale flu
This paper presented the three-dimensional oocyte manipulation system for the two-electrode voltage clamp (TEVC) experiment under stereomicroscopy. We firstly developed a sequential calibration method to correlate the workspace of the stereomicroscopy with the image and the micromanipulator. Even th…
This paper presents a system that picks up protoplasts produced by removing the surrounding cell wall of root cells while preserving their positional information. The fundamental concept of this system involves scanning the root tip over time using a confocal microscopy to measure the positional inf…
A microactuator that exhibited the variable stiffness function and the strain control was demonstrated by using the shape memory alloy (SMA), shape memory polymer (SMP), and the strain-sensitive stretchable heater polymer of multi-walled carbon nanotube/ionic liquid (IL): polydimethylsiloxane. The S
The automation of the experimental process and evaluation method is required to screen chemical substances in the fields of biology and chemistry. In the case with biological evaluations, the automation of the mechanical probing has been considered, but the measurement method should possess versatil
Non-contact manipulation technology has extensive application in the manipulation and fabrication of micro/nanomaterials. However, the manipulation devices are often precise and complex, operated only by professionals and subject to site constraints. We propose a simple optoelectronic tweezer platfo…
Microbubble-induced acoustic microstreaming for efficient on-chip micromanipulation is widely developed in biological applications. However, it is still challenging to simultaneously transport, trap, and rotate single cells using one device in a biocompatible manner, while expensive and bulky tradit…
Micro-nano-robots are considered to be a promising platform for drug delivery in biological organisms, but there are still urgent technical problems in biocompatibility and degradability of 3D-printed-based micro-robots that need to be solved. Therefore, in this paper, we design a magnetized bio-hyb…
Magnetic microrobots can be propelled precisely and wirelessly in vivo using magnetic field for targeted drug delivery and early detection. They are promising for clinical trials since magnetic fields are capable of penetrating most materials with minimal interaction, and are nearly harmless to huma…
Sonoporation, which typically employs acoustic cavitation microbubbles, can enhance the permeability of the cell membrane, allowing foreign matter to enter cells across the natural barriers. However, the diameter nonuniformity and random distribution of microbubbles make it difficult to achieve cont…
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are the primary cause of tumor metastasis after surgery. Metastatic tumor recurrence is the leading reason of cancer death. It is prerequisite to develop a platform for CTCs separation to predict the cancer cell transfer in important organs. Herein, a novel acoustic mi…
We have proposed a bio-automation system to isolate and recover circulating tumor cells (CTCs) individually from whole blood. An open-channel microfluidic chip-based approach is used to isolate the CTCs. The proposed microfluidic chip design can form a stable air-liquid interface. CTCs are trapped b
In this study, we propose the manipulation and cell injection of a fluorescent microsensor using multiple wavelengths of light. The fluorescent microsensor is made of a 1-μm polystyrene particle containing infrared (IR: 808 nm) absorbing dye and Rhodamine B. The polystyrene particle can be manipulat…
In this paper, we present a magnetized cell-robot using macrophages as templates, which can be controlled under a strong gradient magnetic field, to approach and kill cancer cells in both vitro and vivo environment. Firstly, we establish a magnetic control system using only four coils which can gene…
Monitoring of biosignals on a daily basis plays important roles for the health management of elderly. The monitoring system for the daily life, the system should not require the subjects to take special effort like wearing a sensor. We propose biosignals measurement using wide-range load sensor on t…
In single-cell/spheroid analyses, flow cytometry plays a key role in high-throughput measurements. Among the considerable numbers of indexes available for a target evaluation, mechanical characteristics such as a Young's modulus have been focused upon as new indexes related to physiological conditio
Robot integrated microfluidic chip is a key technology for microscale applications. Recently, the technology has been applied to on-chip mixing, which mix solutions on a microfluidic chip because it is a promising tool to analyze not only the chemical reaction with the small sample volume, but also
Self-propelled swimming microrobots have significant potential for medical applications. The outstanding technical challenges are the realization of a propulsion mechanism suitable for micro/nanoscale fluids and of an energy supply mechanism that can function inside the human body. Our proposed conc
Robot-integrated microfluidic chip is a promising tool to realize mechanical characterization of a single cell with high throughput and high accuracy. The microfluidic chip used in our system has a pair of mechanical microprobes to measure deformation and reaction force of cells. In our previous stu
We propose an on-chip micromanipulation method based on mode switching of vibration-induced asymmetric flow. The asymmetric flow can be induced around rotationally asymmetric structures on a microfluidic chip by applying a circular vibration to the chip. Thus, the flow pattern can be switched by cha…
An automatic system for evaluating single cell viscoelasticity is proposed and tested in this paper. The system includes three main operations, and they are the operations of catch, load and launch. In the catch operation, the system is capable of capturing a target cell by high-speed vision and hig
Monitoring of biosignals plays important roles in health management in daily life. Especially, the sensing method of biosignals, which does not require special efforts such as restraining people or wearing the sensors to measure them, is really important to maintain monitoring activities of people.…
Cyanobacteria have ion channels which response to osmolarity change in living environment. Since it may lead to the mechanical characteristics changes of the cell itself due to the intracellular pressure changes, we focus on constructing the mechanical characteristics measurement system of Synechocy…
We present a novel cell manipulation method based on vibration-induced flow in open-chip environment. By applying circular vibration to a chip having micropillar patterns on its surface, local whirling flow is induced around the micropillars. Therefore, by patterning micropillar array on a chip and…
This paper proposes the method for mechanical characterization of floating cells on a microfluidic chip. We measured the reactive force of cells on the chip by applying mechanical deformation to the cells. Particularly we focused on the method to improve the sensing resolution of the probe position…
We present a super wide-measurement range load sensor with high-durability for multi-biosignal sensing in daily life. We employed quartz crystal resonator (QCR) load sensor with super wide range (from 6 × 10-5 to 30 [N]) for sensing of biosignals ranging from mN order (e.g. heartbeat) to 100 N order…