Design, modeling and control of a piezoelectric ultrasonic microdissection technique for the molecular analysis of tissue

摘要

Molecular techniques are transforming our understanding of cellular function and disease. However, accurate molecular analysis methods will be limited if the input DNA, RNA or protein is not derived from a pure population of cells or is contaminated by the wrong cells. The modeling and control of the piezoelectric actuator, with an objective application towards ultrasonic vibration cutting (UVC), is addressed in this paper. The piezoelectric actuator is used in realizing the fast and precise movements of the developed UVC so as to procure a pure population of targeted cells from tissue sections for subsequent pathology analysis with precision and without causing a large deformation. To address the nonlinearities and uncertainties of the piezoelectric actuator, an adaptive controller based on a hysteresis model is proposed to yield robust control performance. A multilayer piezoelectric actuator is used to actuate a sharp needle vibrating at high frequency and low amplitude to cut the tissue. Experimental results showed that the embedded tissue can be quickly and precisely cut with this ultrasonic vibration microdissection method.