Automated Design Tools for Biophotonic Systems
Traditional design methods for flow cytometers and other complex biophotonic systems are increasingly recognized as a major bottleneck in instrumentation development. The many manual steps involved in the analysis and translation of the design, from optical layout to a detailed mechanical model and ultimately to a fully functional instrument, are laborintensive and prone to wasteful trial-and-error iterations. We have developed two complementary, linked technologies that address this problem: one design tool (LiveIdeas™) provides an intuitive environment for interactive, real-time simulations of system-level performance; the other tool (BeamWise™) automates the generation of mechanical 3D CAD models based on those simulations. The strength of our approach lies in a parametric modeling strategy that breaks boundaries between engineering subsystems (e.g., optics and fluidics) to predict critical behavior of the instrument as a whole. The results: 70 percent reduction in early-stage project effort, significantly enhancing the probability of success by virtue of a more efficient exploration of the design space.