A novel high-speed camera system for capturing microfluidic droplets

Image-based detection is vital to a range of droplet microfluidics applications in biotechnology. However, existing solutions are either cost-effective, or adequate in terms of resolution and throughput. A high enough image resolution and throughput in terms of framerate are necessary to capture and analyse droplet formation, size distribution, and velocity with sufficient temporal and spatial resolution. Compared to previous works on cost-effective, compact systems, which used off-the-shelf instruments, in this work we demonstrate a setup based on a lowcost camera chip and FPGA to achieve an imaging throughput of $\sim 150$ fps at a resolution adequate to visualize individual droplets. The total cost of electronics including the camera is ~€6500.