Automatic image analysis of zebrafish embryo development for lab-on-a-chip

The zebrafish is a popular model organism that is widely applied with lab-on-a-chip (LoC) technology in drug discovery and toxicity assay experiments. In such experiments, constant human attention is required during and after the experiments for online and offline monitoring and analysis. The throughput and turnaround time are both hindered from lack of automated image analysis. In this paper, a novel image analysis algorithm is developed to automatically recognise the first two stages of the zebrafish embryo development in order to detect anomalies caused by an applied chemical agent during the development process. The algorithm has been examined using 55 zebrafish embryo images and has a success rate of 94.5% in recognising the correct embryo development stage