Evaporation and focus degradation mitigation in in-incubator live cell imaging for capacitance lab-on-CMOS microsystem calibration
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Lab-on-CMOS is an instrumentation technology that combines miniaturized bioanalytical hardware with complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) electronics to provide integrated biosensing in a compact format. This paper focuses on a class of lab-on-CMOS systems that utilize capacitance sensing as a means to monitor cell cultures and track cell proliferation, as well as other cell life-cycle events. In this paradigm, changes in interfacial capacitance result from the activity of adherent cells at a bioelectronic interface. These changes are mapped to cell proliferation or life-cycle events using ground-truth measurements such as live cell imaging from real-time microscopy. This paper identifies instrumentation challenges that arise from conducting these ground-truth measurements in a calibrated cell culture environment, i.e., when the lab-on-CMOS system is deployed inside a CO2 cell culture incubator. In particular, we provide a detailed study of evaporation and focus degradation mitigation techniques for application in-incubator live cell imaging during lab-on-CMOS capacitance sensor calibration tasks. We show that autofocusing the microscopy column and provisioning the lab-on-CMOS with an immersion lid are two approaches that significantly improve the quality of live cell imaging ground-truth measurements over long periods.
Source: Review of Scientific Instruments
DOI: 10.1063/5.0271101
Authors: Y. Gilpin, C.-Y. Lin, M. Dandin
Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
Language: English
Topic: CCD and CMOS Imaging Sensors
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: National Science Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W4414159556