VUMC Soil Worm Activity Monitor Mohd Fakhrurrazi Mohd Salleh (EE) Suhaili Harun (EE) Amani Rafie (CompE) Saiful Azlan Adanan (BME)

Project Goal Compare the behavior and activity of worms (normal and mutant) by designing a device that can automatically measure their movements, so that it can be used in neurobiological research

Project Description The worm is placed in a drop of liquid (~100μL) using a micro dispenser After it is placed, it starts to swim in the shape of a “C” The number of movements are to be quantified as a function of time

Worm (Caenorhabditis elegans) A free-living nematode, ~1 mm in length, which lives in a temperate soil environment Has the advantage of being a multicellular organism, which is simple enough to be studied in great detail One of the simplest organisms with a nervous system (neurobiology) About 200 sinusoidal movements per minute

C-elegans

Problems The worm is very small and moves very fast The current method is time consuming The worm might not have a stationary position (translation movement) Movement calculation is difficult due to unexpected worm’s activity

Approach Use microscope Capture image with a CCD video camera Apply image processing Calculate the movement

What have we done so far? Met with the sponsor, Randy Blakely (Ph.D) Meetings with group members Website was launched at Research on the worm Research on the related components

Findings How pixelization is applied on the image of the worm from the microscope SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) time coding

Block Diagram

The Microscope

Worm Trays

Future Work Further research on the hardware aspects (e.g. microscope) and the software (MatLab) Understand how to apply pixelization on images Find out the correct intensity of light and the resolution of the microscope