Hardware acceleration of a dielectrophoresis system for achieving a single-neuron-per-electrode arrangement in microelectrode arrays

Abstract

This paper describes an image processing algorithm and its efficient architecture. The proposed architecture is used to process images of microelectrode arrays (MEAs) and micro-wells captured by a microscope camera in a dielectrophoresis (DEP)-based system which consists as well of digital switches for turning the DEP force 'on' or 'off'. The images are processed in order to determine if a neuron has entered any of the micro-wells in which case the corresponding switch turns 'off' the DEP force. This process must be in real-time to avoid more than one cell to be loaded in a micro-well. The proposed architecture has been successfully implemented and tested on a Zynq SoC. Results achieved have shown that the system can process one image in 9 ms which meets the minimum real-time requirements of this DEP system. 2015, UK Simulation Society. All rights reserved.