Design of an Automatic Robotic System for Zebrafish Larval Heart Microinjection

Zebrafish is an important model organism, and microinjection of zebrafish larvae is a common operation in biological laboratories. The widely used manual microinjection has the disadvantages of low efficiency, low success rate, and low consistency. This paper presents an automatic robotic system for microinjection of zebrafish larval hearts. A localization method based on modulo operation has been proposed for the larval heart. In addition, a new software system with a user-friendly interface has been developed, which integrates the designed heart localization algorithm. A prototype robotic system for automatic heart microinjection of zebrafish larvae has been developed by combining multiple hardware devices. Moreover, relevant experimental studies were conducted, and the results indicated that the robotic system can effectively replace human operators and accurately complete automated microinjection targeting zebrafish larval hearts. The developed system can be used in drug screening research for cardiovascular-related diseases of zebrafish larvae.