Robotic Pick-And-Place of Multiple Embryos for Vitrification
Zhuoran Zhang, Jun Liu, Xiang Wang, Qili Zhao, Chao Zhou, Min Tan, Huayan Pu, Shaorong Xie
Abstract
Embryo vitrification is an essential cryopreservation technique in IVF (in vitro fertilization) clinics. Vitrification involves pick-and-place of an embryo in multiple types of cryoprotectant solutions for processing before placing the embryo on a vitrification straw for cryopreservation in liquid nitrogen. Manual operation and existing robotic vitrification are only capable of aspirating one embryo at a time for processing; thus, other embryos are kept in the culture dish on a microscope stage for tens of minutes, which is detrimental to the development potential of the embryos. In order to minimize the total vitrification time, we have recently developed a robotic system for the pick-and-place of multiple embryos and process every three embryos as a group. Visual detection algorithms were developed for locating multiple embryos in three dimensions. Dynamics of embryo motion was modeled and a linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controller was developed to aspirate each embryo with a minimum volume of excess medium. The robotic system then placed the embryos onto vitrification straws by depositing a thin layer of medium that contains the embryos, and finally, aspirated away the medium surrounding the embryo for fast cooling. Experimental results demonstrate that robotic multiembryo processing has a throughput three times that of manual operation and achieved a high success rate of 95.2%, embryo survival rate of 90.0%, and development rate of 88.8%.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2017_roboticpickandpl,
title = {Robotic Pick-And-Place of Multiple Embryos for Vitrification},
author = {Zhuoran Zhang and Jun Liu and Xiang Wang and Qili Zhao and Chao Zhou and Min Tan and Huayan Pu and Shaorong Xie and Yu Sun},
booktitle = {RA-L 2017},
year = {2017}
}