Height Localization of Micropipette in Zebrafish Embryo Penetration Based on Force Sensor

As an important step of biological micromanipulation, it is extremely complicated to penetrate the cell at a fixed point after the injection micropipette is in contact with the cell. It is hard to reach the same contact point, especially the height position, by only using computer vision in manual operations. There is also a problem of poor repeatability in practice. In this paper, we proposed a contact height localization method of the micropipette for cell penetration based on force sensor, in which the precise contact time was detected by force sensor to obtain the current horizontal position of the micropipette tip, and then the height of the micropipette tip can be calculated based on image processing, improving the efficiency and accuracy of cell penetration. The system is built based on computer vision, force sensor, and computer control. Experiments performed on zebrafish embryos verify the feasibility of the system and the effectiveness of the proposed approach.