Date: 09/12/2011
Project Name: A Device to Measure Mechanical Properties of Cultured
Cells
Group Members:
Geoffrey Gunter, Gang Li, Chen Ye
Date: 9/17/11
Current status of project: Brainstormed several
design ideas that would meet the scope/specifications of the project.
Work completed in the last week: Finished the
project scope, did research on existing methods and designs, developed a few
simple designs that may be used for the final design, and designate weekly meeting times and places.
Work planned for next week: Decide on a specific
cell type to study, narrow down our design ideas, and do more research on the
proposed designs.
Anything needed from mentor/client or TA or
instructor to continue work: Meeting with mentor next week to discuss viability
of ideas.
Date: 9/26/11
Current Status of project: Continuing to research design ideas and discuss novel methods/devices while beginning to weigh the pros and cons of each solution (how well they fit our design specifications). Working on preliminary presentation and written report.
Work completed in the last week: Continued research on design ideas, especially photoacoustic imaging solutions. Met with Junjie Yao in Dr. Wang's lab to discuss the feasibility of photoacoustics in our project. Completed most of the preliminary oral presentation and written report though both require some editing. Established a preliminary project timeline and current organization of responsibilities.
Work planned for next week: Finish the preliminary presentation and report. Continue to research the existing solutions and possibly narrow down our alternatives. Consider solutions to the shortcomings of existing designs.
Anything needed from mentor/client or TA or instructor to continue work: Feedback from preliminary design report. General guidelines for the current stage of the design process.
Date: 10/2/11
Current status of project: We have narrowed our ideas down to the three most promising solutions: photoacoustic microscopy, “cell poker” and the combination of electro-deformation and micro-needle arrays. We plan on doing more research on the mechanisms of these three methods and searching for the possible improvements that can be done to overcome their shortcomings.
Work completed in the last week: We met with Prof. Miller James to get some information about acoustic microscopy. We also completed our preliminary oral and written reports. Work for next week was divided and assigned to each member.
Work planned for next week: Geoffrey, Rich and Chen will do more in-depth research on “cell poker,” photoacoustic microscopy and the combination of electro-deformation and micro-needle arrays, respectively. We will also meet with Prof. Yin to talk about these three potential solutions at the end of next week.
Anything needed from mentor/client or TA or instructor to continue work: feedback for the three methods/devices we considered the most promising.
Date: 10/10/2011
Current status of project: We have narrowed our ideas down to the three most promising solutions: photoacoustic microscopy, "cell poker" and the combination of electro-deformation and micro-needle arrays. We did further research on these three methods. Once we make our final choice next week, we will proceed with the intricate details. Specifically, we must verify if each of these methods will yield usable mechanical property data.
Work completed in the last week: We met with Junjie Yao of Wang Lab and talked about photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) further. For PAM to be viable, we need to verify with Prof. Wang or Prof. Anastasio that the photoacoustic signal is strong enough to obtain mechanical properties from. We met with Prof. Yin and gave him an update of our progress both in meeting and on paper.
Work planned for next week: We will meet with Prof. Taber to talk about the cell poker, and Prof. Wang about PAM. We might need to talk to Prof. Anastasio on the issue of the strength of the photoacoustic signal for the purpose of determining mechanical properties (not for imaging).
Anything needed from mentor/client or TA or instructor to continue work: Nothing is required from the TA or instructor yet. It is possible that we meet with Prof. Yin at the end of next week after we have chosen the final design.
Date:10/17/11
Current status of project: We are continuing to narrow down our design solutions between Photoacoustic Microscopy (PAM), the Cell Poker, and Electro-Deformation/Micro-needle arrays with the goal of choosing an ideal solution soon. Our most recent research has shown that the Electro-deformation method is likely to be the most impractical of the three. The other two methods still require brainstorming/research to further analyze their viability and determine which is the better design.
Work completed in the last week: We met with Prof. Wang to discuss whether there was a strong enough signal from PAM to determine mechanical properties from the induced oscillations. We also discussed with Dr. Wang whether the Gruneisen coefficient could be decoupled from the optical absorbance in order to study perturbations that may change the absorbance properties of the cell. We met with Dr. Taber and discussed the methodology and mechanical modeling using the cell poker, specifically whether osmotic swelling could be omitted from the process. We created a preliminary Designsafe report and performed Pugh chart analysis on the three designs with the result that PAM is currently the most favorable design.
Work planned for next week: We will meet with Dr. Yin to discuss the findings of the previous week and continue to brainstorm methods of decoupling absorbance from the cell mechanical properties. We will contact Dr. Elson to ask more about mechanical modeling/methodology using the cell poker. We will begin writing the Progress Report/Presentation.
Anything needed from mentor/client or TA or instructor to continue work: Meeting with mentor to discuss the results of our research from this past week.
Date:10/24
Current status of project: We have just presented our progress report today and chose our final design: Optical Resolution Photoacoustic Microscopy with Phagocytosis of a Dominant Absorber. The presentation slides have been uploaded to telesis. The written report will be put together on Tuesday and uploaded to telesis.
Work completed in the last week: Based on the exchanges with Dr. Wang and Dr. Yin, we did a Pugh chart analysis, and further research into our available designs. We then picked PAM as our final design base, and finished the presentation slides.
Work planned for next week: We plan to meet with Dr. Yin after turning in our progress report to talk about some of the more specific details of the proposed design.
Anything needed from mentor/client or TA or instructor to continue work: Meeting with our mentor to discuss some details.
Date: 10/31/11
Current status of project: We are currently working on the details of our final design: Optical Resolution Photoacoustic Microscopy with Phagocytosis of a Dominant Absorber.
Work completed in the last week: We finished the Progress Oral and Written Reports. Both reports were uploaded onto Telesis.
Work planned for next week: We plan on meeting with our mentor, Prof. Yin, and discussing the details of our final design with him. More research will be done on the specific details in our method.
Anything needed from mentor/client or TA or instructor to continue work: We need some suggestions on the potential problems we will face when figuring out the specific details of our design.
Date: 11/7/11
Current status of project: We are working on the details for the final design.
Work completed in the last week: The website was updated.
Work planned for next week: We plan to meet this week, and also meet with our mentor at the end of the week to talk about a few ideas for the final design.
Anything needed from mentor/client or TA or instructor to continue work: Some guidance from our mentor is necessary in this week.
Date: 11/14/11
Current status of project: We are finalizing the details of the device we have designed. We are looking into the commercially available apparatuses,including laser, microscope, ultrasound transducer, micromanipulator, microinjector, micropipette, and graphite nanoparticles, which comprise our final device.
Work completed in the last week: We talked to Prof. Yin and he gave us some valuable advices on the details of the design. We also planned out the schedule for the rest of this semester to ensure the completion of our final report on time.
Work planned for next week: We plan on meeting with Prof. Yin again and discussing our progress in searching the commercially available apparatuses. We will also start to do the CAD drawings this week.
Anything needed from mentor/client or TA or instructor to continue work: We need to have a meeting with our mentor, Prof. Yin.