Xuping Zhang

University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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Publications (6)4.43 Total impact

  • Source
    Article: Robotic ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection)
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    ABSTRACT: This paper is the first report of robotic intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). ICSI is a clinical procedure performed worldwide in fertility clinics, requiring pick-up of a single sperm and insertion of it into an oocyte (i.e., egg cell). Since its invention 20 years ago, ICSI has been conducted manually by a handful of highly skilled embryologists; however, success rates vary significantly among clinics due to poor reproducibility and inconsistency across operators. We leverage our work in robotic cell injection to realize robotic ICSI and aim ultimately, to standardize how clinical ICSI is performed. This paper presents some of the technical aspects of our robotic ICSI system, including a cell holding device, motion control, and computer vision algorithms. The system performs visual tracking of single sperm, robotic immobilization of sperm, aspiration of sperm with picoliter volume, and insertion of sperm into an oocyte with a high degree of reproducibility. The system requires minimal human involvement (requiring only a few computer mouse clicks), and is human operator skill independent. Using the hamster oocyte-human sperm model in preliminary trials, the robotic system demonstrated a high success rate of 90.0% and survival rate of 90.7% (n = 120).
    IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 08/2011; · 2.28 Impact Factor
  • Source
    Article: Robotic ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection).
    [show abstract] [hide abstract]
    ABSTRACT: This paper is the first report of robotic intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). ICSI is a clinical procedure performed worldwide in fertility clinics, requiring pick-up of a single sperm and insertion of it into an oocyte (i.e., egg cell). Since its invention 20 years ago, ICSI has been conducted manually by a handful of highly skilled embryologists; however, success rates vary significantly among clinics due to poor reproducibility and inconsistency across operators. We leverage our work in robotic cell injection to realize robotic ICSI and aim ultimately, to standardize how clinical ICSI is performed. This paper presents some of the technical aspects of our robotic ICSI system, including a cell holding device, motion control, and computer vision algorithms. The system performs visual tracking of single sperm, robotic immobilization of sperm, aspiration of sperm with picoliter volume, and insertion of sperm into an oocyte with a high degree of reproducibility. The system requires minimal human involvement (requiring only a few computer mouse clicks), and is human operator skill independent. Using the hamster oocyte-human sperm model in preliminary trials, the robotic system demonstrated a high success rate of 90.0% and survival rate of 90.7% (n=120).
    IEEE transactions on bio-medical engineering 07/2011; 58(7):2102-8. · 2.15 Impact Factor
  • Conference Proceeding: Automated cell manipulation: Robotic ICSI
    [show abstract] [hide abstract]
    ABSTRACT: This paper is the first report of robotic ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection). ICSI is a clinical procedure performed worldwide in fertility clinics, requiring pick-up of a single sperm and insert it into oocyte (i.e., an egg cell). Since its invention 20 years ago, ICSI has been conducted manually by a handful of highly skilled embryologists; however, success rates vary significantly among clinics due to poor reproducibility and inconsistency across operators. We leverage our work in robotic cell injection to realize robotic ICSI and aim ultimately, to standardize how clinical ICSI is performed. This paper presents some of the technical aspects of our robotic ICSI system, including a cell holding device and motion control and computer vision algorithms. The system performs visual tracking of single sperm, robotic immobilization of sperm, aspiration of sperm with pico-liter volume, and insertion of sperm into an oocyte with a high degree of reproducibility. The system requires minimal human involvement (requiring only a few computer mouse clicking), and is human operator skill independent. Using the hamster oocyte-human sperm model in preliminary trials, the robotic system demonstrated a high success rate of 90.0% and survival rate of 90.7% (n=120).
    Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2011 IEEE International Conference on; 06/2011
  • Conference Proceeding: Automated batch transfer of zebrafish embryos using a multi-degrees-of-freedom system
    Xuping Zhang, Zhe Lu, D. Gelinas, B. Ciruna, Yu Sun
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    ABSTRACT: Biological experiments and drug screen require the transfer of individual zebrafish embryos into standard multi-well microplates. Manually pipetting embryos into wells is tedious and time consuming. This paper reports a prototype cooperative robotic system capable of transferring zebrafish embryos in parallel and depositing a single embryo per well in a 96-well microplate. A cell holding device was developed to trap multiple embryos in a regular pattern. The cell holding device and a microplate are positioned and aligned along multiple axes by the system. Embryo release strategies were systematically studied and compared. Experiments demonstrated that out of the 1,056 zebrafish embryos used in experiments (i.e., 44 times parallel transfer into 11 96-well plates), 996 wells were successfully filled with one and only one zebrafish embryo, representing a success rate of 94.3%. Further experiments confirmed that the transferred embryos were able to develop into zebrafish with 100% survival rate.
    Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2011 IEEE International Conference on; 06/2011
  • Conference Proceeding: Automated cell manipulation: Robotic ICSI.
    IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2011, Shanghai, China, 9-13 May 2011; 01/2011
  • Source
    Article: Batch Transfer of Zebrafish Embryos Into Multiwell Plates.
    IEEE T. Automation Science and Engineering. 01/2011; 8:625-632.