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Adaptive droplet routing in digital microfluidic biochips using deep reinforcement learning

Publication ,  Conference
Liang, TC; Zhong, Z; Bigdeli, Y; Ho, TY; Chakrabarty, K; Fair, R
Published in: 37th International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2020
January 1, 2020

We present and investigate a novel application domain for deep reinforcement learning (RL): droplet routing on digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs). A DMFB, composed of a twodimensional electrode array, manipulates discrete fluid droplets to automatically execute biochemical protocols such as point-of-care clinical diagnosis. However, a major concern associated with the use of DMFBs is that electrodes in a biochip can degrade over time. Droplet-transportation operations associated with the degraded electrodes can fail, thereby compromising the integrity of the bioassay outcome. We show that casting droplet transportation as an RL problem enables the training of deep network policies to capture the underlying health conditions of electrodes and provide reliable fluidic operations. We propose a new RLbased droplet-routing flow that can be used for various sizes of DMFBs, and demonstrate reliable execution of an epigenetic bioassay with the RL droplet router on a fabricated DMFB. To facilitate further research, we also present a simulation environment based on the OpenAI Gym Interface for RL-guided droplet-routing problems on DMFBs.

Duke Scholars

Published In

37th International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2020

Publication Date

January 1, 2020

Volume

PartF168147-8

Start / End Page

6006 / 6016
 

Citation

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Liang, T. C., Zhong, Z., Bigdeli, Y., Ho, T. Y., Chakrabarty, K., & Fair, R. (2020). Adaptive droplet routing in digital microfluidic biochips using deep reinforcement learning. In 37th International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2020 (Vol. PartF168147-8, pp. 6006–6016).
Liang, T. C., Z. Zhong, Y. Bigdeli, T. Y. Ho, K. Chakrabarty, and R. Fair. “Adaptive droplet routing in digital microfluidic biochips using deep reinforcement learning.” In 37th International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2020, PartF168147-8:6006–16, 2020.
Liang TC, Zhong Z, Bigdeli Y, Ho TY, Chakrabarty K, Fair R. Adaptive droplet routing in digital microfluidic biochips using deep reinforcement learning. In: 37th International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2020. 2020. p. 6006–16.
Liang, T. C., et al. “Adaptive droplet routing in digital microfluidic biochips using deep reinforcement learning.” 37th International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2020, vol. PartF168147-8, 2020, pp. 6006–16.
Liang TC, Zhong Z, Bigdeli Y, Ho TY, Chakrabarty K, Fair R. Adaptive droplet routing in digital microfluidic biochips using deep reinforcement learning. 37th International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2020. 2020. p. 6006–6016.

Published In

37th International Conference on Machine Learning, ICML 2020

Publication Date

January 1, 2020

Volume

PartF168147-8

Start / End Page

6006 / 6016