tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7484943102107739496.post3234698240529214259..comments2023-03-01T07:46:47.230-05:00Comments on Pursuit of Unorthodox Ideas: Turning Lasers into Robotic Optical Hands for Manipulating Biological Cells SK Guptahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08212054102534056561noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7484943102107739496.post-86194659716230716342013-06-11T10:23:49.470-04:002013-06-11T10:23:49.470-04:00The idea of 'optical hands' is fascinating...The idea of 'optical hands' is fascinating and the group's efforts in making it a reality are very impressive! I will be much interested in using this technology to study biological swarming; with an ability to isolate individuals and precisely increase or decrease population sizes, we can systematically characterize crucial local properties (e.g, neighbor interactions) and global properties (e.g., phase transitions) in microbial swarms. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02197477385747188966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7484943102107739496.post-57967350175106922022013-06-10T12:30:28.320-04:002013-06-10T12:30:28.320-04:00This looks really cool, and especially useful for ...This looks really cool, and especially useful for medical research. Here's my question though: when can we see these cells play soccer, or dance or something? Better yet, what if people could play Pong against a living cell?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17725433810354718307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7484943102107739496.post-92115027851391490742013-06-07T11:14:55.025-04:002013-06-07T11:14:55.025-04:00I'd like to add a couple of things to Sagar...I'd like to add a couple of things to Sagar's replies.<br /><br />- The group is looking at coupling optical tweezers with microfluidics to achieve high throughput and precise motion simultaneously. In such a hybrid set-up, the interaction between laser and fluid flow will be significant. The experiments shown in the video were conducted in fluid at rest. <br /><br />- Apart from the sensing instrumentation issue, real-time planning and control becomes computationally challenging for 3D manipulation due to the growth in state-action space (3 degrees of freedom to 6) and the need to account for additional physical phenomena such as the shadowing effect of laser beams and the downward pull of gravity. Ashishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03072006160606182034noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7484943102107739496.post-21945427271927633152013-06-06T20:32:37.311-04:002013-06-06T20:32:37.311-04:00I can help you clarifying some of your queries:
1....I can help you clarifying some of your queries:<br />1. You can control the concentration of silica microspheres in the solution. Optical tweezers here is used as a hand and microspheres as fingers to move the cell to the desired locations.<br />2. Cells are of size 4-6 microns or more. But we have done experiments with even smaller objects of around 2 micron. Our planning is very fast and hence can handle very dynamic obstacles. <br />3. It can potentially be used for manipulating cells in 3D. Optical tweezers can trap objects in 3D. Right now we are imaging only from top and do not have any depth perception. Hence, we have to restrict our planning on a 2D plane.<br />4. You need to have depth perception to move objects in 3D. In our experiments all the cells are lying more or less on the same plane. We did not observe any effect on other cells present in scene which are not manipulated.<br />5. Yes, the manipulation is real time. Currently OT is only used for in vitro experiments due to its design constraints. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12628146870221633976noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7484943102107739496.post-29222482549630201602013-06-06T19:06:15.324-04:002013-06-06T19:06:15.324-04:00This is an amazing piece of work, very lucidly des...This is an amazing piece of work, very lucidly described. The video/demo is very striking. If it is possible to manipulate individual cells in this way, major applications could result. The video has peaked my curiosity, and I'm wondering about the following questions:<br />1) I presume that it is possible to insert and remove the silica microspheres from the fluid at will. Is this true? So in any real<br />life biological application, the optical tweezers "leave no trace" except move the desired cells to the desired locations.<br />2) Are the cells sufficiently large that the effects of Brownian motion can be neglected? Are there situations where small cells could be significantly affected by Brownian motion, therby complicating the control/planning/obstacle avoidance?<br />3) Is this work and its potential applications two dimensional? If so, is the laser/optical tweezer originating from outside the two dimensional plane in which the cells live?<br />4) Is the analogous problem in three dimensions much harder? Does one have to consider the interaction of the optical tweezer with the fluid medium, and whether the optical tweezer may hit other unrelated cells in the fluid medium?<br />5) The video suggests that the control and movement is happening very quickly in real time. Is it reasonable to expect that the techniques developed here will be applicable to situations like the control of multiple cells insider a human artery/vein (where the fluid medium may be moving with respect to the walls)?<br /><br />I suspect that an immense amount of work has gone into this video - the robotics control/planning, the experimental work, the imaging technology, the collaboration between the experimentation, the robotic calculations, and the laser manipulation knowledge. It is very impressive.<br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11065000615738868372noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7484943102107739496.post-50540002445090470302013-06-03T11:47:36.895-04:002013-06-03T11:47:36.895-04:00This is a great example of robotics in conjunction...This is a great example of robotics in conjunction with biology which can be used to solve advance medical problems. I am seriously looking forward for an actual practical implementation of this work. Good work by Optical Tweezers team..!!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09103175070428920775noreply@blogger.com