High throughput cell sorter based on lensfree imaging of cells

Introduction: The trend towards digitization of healthcare promises a future of improved, insight driven, more economical and patient-centered care models. Besides digitization of health records, it has spurred massive research in nano- and bioMEMS devices that sense health related parameters in a compact format. A myriad of devices including innovative CMOS FET structures, nanophotonic and nanomechanical structures, nanowires and nanopores[1,2,3] are being explored as suitable sensors for bio-molecules in ultralow concentrations. Large scale integration offered by silicon technology becomes indispensable when analyzing large amounts of different bio-entities. The most compelling example is the sequencing of DNA with CMOS based platforms. Millions of sensing sites are required to cover the informative genetic aberrations of the human genome, that in total contains 3 billion base pairs. Silicon CMOS technology has been the enabling technology[4,5] to reduce the cost of analysis to a few 100 USD per analysis. Equal emphasis should be put on scaling the fluidic networks required to prepare samples towards those molecular detection devices in order to speed up the total analysis time starting directly from patient material. Figure 1 shows such a silicon microfluidic chip[6], to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP's), those SNP aberrations are important e.g. for analyzing cancer subtypes, drug response prediction.