SIMOP-A fast tool for generating optimum dilutions of microfluidic samples using simulation

The technology of digital microfluidic (DMF) biochips now offers viable replacement of expensive healthcare and bio-, chemical laboratory procedures with low-cost, fully-automated, miniaturized integrated systems. Preparing dilution of a fluid sample that optimizes various parameters such as reagent-cost, mixing time, waste production, is a basic problem in the domain of algorithmic microfluidics. Most of the existing dilution algorithms used in droplet-based microfluidic systems deploy a sequence of (1 : 1) mix-split steps, where two unit-volume droplets of different concentrations are mixed, followed by a balanced split operation to obtain two equal-sized droplets. In this paper, we introduce a simulation-guided optimization procedure (SIMOP) for achieving the target concentrations with a sequence of (1 : 1) mix-split steps while optimizing multiple factors according to user-specified priority levels. The SIMOP-algorithm produces a given concentration while optimizing each criterion as desired. Experimental results favorably demonstrate the performance of the proposed method compared to BS and DMRW algorithms. The proposed procedure may find many potential applications to microfluidics such as in' biomedical engineering and healthcare services.