Dynamic Fluorescent Imaging for Robotic Patch Clamp in vivo: Modeling and Control

Fluorescent imaging through fluorescent dye injection is the key technique for lighting the in vivo environment and localizing the target cell in it for patch clamp operation in vivo. At present, manual fluorescent imaging is usually a labor-intensive high-skill requisite work, significantly limiting the application of patch clamp operation in vivo. In this paper, a computational modeling of the diffusion process of the injected fluorescent dye is established using the commercial ANSYS Fluent software. Based on this model, the distribution of the mass fraction, proven to be linearly related to fluorescence intensity, was calculated to simulate the fluorescent field formed by fluorescent dye injection. Further, an ADRC controller was developed to generate feedback-controlled fluorescent fields. With the above model and controller, a mobile fluorescent field, and varying fluorescent field with constant mass fraction at the target position are generated to fulfill the requirement of in vivo environment observation, search and localization of the target cell in patch clamp operation, respectively. The above results prove the feasibility of ADRC-controlled dynamic fluorescent imaging in the patch clamp operation in vivo.