8296105
Concurrent testing of digital microfluidics-based biochips
We present a concurrent testing methodology for detecting catastrophic faults in digital microfluidics-based biochips and investigate the related problems of test planning and resource optimization. We first show that an integer linear programming model can be used to minimize testing time for a given hardware overhead, for example, droplet dispensing sources and capacitive sensing circuitry. Due to the NP-complete nature of the problem, we also develop efficient heuristic procedures to solve this optimization problem. We apply the proposed concurrent testing methodology to a droplet-based microfluidic array that was fabricated and used to perform multiplexed glucose and lactate assays. Experimental results show that the proposed test approach interleaves test application with the biomedical assays and prevents resource conflicts. The proposed method is therefore directed at ensuring high reliability and availability of bio-MEMS and lab-on-a-chip systems, as they are increasingly deployed for safety-critical applications.
2092892
Automated design of pin-constrained digital microfluidic biochips under droplet-interference constraints
Microfluidics-based biochips, also referred to as lab-on-a-chip, are devices that integrate fluid-handling functions such as sample preparation, analysis, separation, and detection. This emerging technology combines electronics with biology to open new application areas such as point-of-care diagnosis, on-chip DNA analysis, and automated drug discovery. We propose a design automation method for pin-constrained biochips that manipulate nanoliter volumes of discrete droplets on a microfluidic array. In contrast to the direct-addressing scheme that has been studied thus far in the literature, we assign a small number of independent control pins to a large number of electrodes in the biochip, thereby reducing design complexity and product cost. The design procedure relies on a droplet-trace-based array partitioning scheme and an efficient pin assignment technique, referred to as the “Connect-5 algorithm.” The proposed method is evaluated using a set of multiplexed bioassays.
60843958
Architectural-level synthesis of digital microfluidics-based biochips
Microfluidics-based biochips offer a promising platform for massively parallel DNA analysis, automated drug discovery, and real-time biomolecular recognition. Current techniques for full-custom design of droplet-based "digital" biochips do not scale well for concurrent assays and for next-generation system-on-chip (SOC) designs that are expected to include fluidic components. We propose a system design methodology that attempts to apply classical architectural-level synthesis techniques to the design of digital microfluidics-based biochips. We first develop an optimal scheduling strategy based on integer linear programming. Since the scheduling problem is NP-complete, we also develop two heuristic techniques that scale well for large problem instances. A clinical diagnostic procedure, namely multiplexed in-vitro diagnostics on human physiological fluids, is used to evaluate the proposed method.
15223714
Defect tolerance for gracefully-degradable microfluidics-based biochips
Defect tolerance is an important design consideration for microfluidics-based biochips that are used for safety-critical applications. We propose a defect tolerance methodology based on graceful degradation and dynamic reconfiguration. We first introduce tile-based biochip architecture, which is scalable for large-scale bioassays. A clustered defect model is used to evaluate the graceful degradation method for tile-based biochips. The proposed schemes ensure that the bioassays mapped to a droplet-based microfluidic array during design can be executed on a defective biochip through operation rescheduling and/or resource rebinding. Real-life biochemical procedures, namely polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and multiplexed in-vitro diagnostics on human physiological fluids, are used to evaluate the proposed defect tolerance schemes.
28952565
Computer-Aided Design and Test for Digital Microfluidics
This article discusses several aspects of design and test methodology centered on digital microfluidics, including modeling, simulation, synthesis, test, and reconfiguration. The automated design methods for digital electronics and adaption of them to droplet-based microfluidics are explained. The test methodology detects both catastrophic and parametric faults by electrically controlling and tracking the motion of the test stimuli droplets and also facilitates concurrent testing, in which fault testing and biomedical assays run simultaneously on a microfluidic system.
1323703
Concurrent testing of droplet-based microfluidic systems for multiplexed biomedical assays
We present a concurrent testing methodology for detecting catastrophic faults in droplet-based microfluidic systems and investigate the related problems of test planning and resource optimization. We apply this methodology to a droplet-based microfluidic array that was fabricated and used to perform multiplexed glucose and lactate assays. The test approach interleaves test application with the biomedical assays and prevents resource conflicts. We show that an integer linear programming model can be used to minimize testing time for a given hardware overhead due to droplet dispensing sources and capacitive sensing circuitry. The proposed approach is therefore directed at ensuring high reliability and availability of bio-MEMS and lab-on-a-chip systems, as they are increasingly deployed for safety-critical applications.
35204150
Ridge-Based Fingerprint Recognition
A new fingerprint, matching method is proposed in this paper, with which two fingerprint skeleton images are matched directly. In this method, an associate table is introduced to describe the relation of a ridge with its neighbor ridges, so the whole ridge pattern can be easily handed. In addition, two unique similarity measures, one for ridge curves, another for ridge patterns, are defined with the elastic distortion taken into account. Experiment results on several databases demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.
15063481
Eye Location under Various Illumination Conditions
Eye location is an important step in face recognition. Locate eyes under various illumination conditions is also an important step especially for most of illumination normalization algorithms. In this paper, an algorithm uses a group of eigenfeature templates and Gabor feature templates to locate eye under various illumination conditions is proposed. Experiment results show that the performance of this algorithm is good and robust under widely changed illumination conditions
41723661
An Adaptive Fingerprint Post-processing Algorithm Based on Mathematical Morphology
In this paper, an adaptive post-processing method using mathematical morphology combined with analyzing the properties of each candidate minutia based on the gray-level image, binary image, local ridge spacing and local orientation is presented to decide whether the minutia is false or true and to eliminate the false one The experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness to reduce the number of false minutiae encountered and improve the thinning fingerprint images at the same time.
207778057
Encrypted Fuzzy Vault Based on Fingerprint
35785382
Multi-UCAV Cooperative Path Planning Using Improved Coevolutionary Multi-Ant-Colony Algorithm
Teams of unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) are well suited to perform cooperative mission in hostile environment, and cooperative path planning holds great attention for improving the efficiency of multi-UCAV combating. In this paper, a mathematical formulation for cooperative path planning problem is presented based on the analysis of typical constraints in the scenario. Different from previous studies, the formulation introduces cooperation coefficient to estimate how the UCAV flight paths fulfill the cooperative constraints. Then a coevolutionary multi-ant-colony algorithm is designed and implemented to solve the above-mentioned problem, based on multi-ant-colony algorithm and coevolutionary strategy. The state transition rule and pheromone updating strategy is modified to increase the algorithm performance. Finally, the proposed method is validated to be effective and feasible to solve the cooperative constraints efficiently, and is effective for the multi-UCAV cooperative path planning problem.