A CMOS contact imager for cell detection in bio-sensing applications

Many experimental procedures in cell biology rely on the use of biochemical light-emitting reporters to enhance structures or processes of interest in a cell sample. The ability to integrate these widely-used protocols on the surface of a CMOS biosensor array, combined with the capacity to perform cell actuation/stimulation, would provide researchers with a valuable tool to conduct high-throughput, high-density, accurate analyses. To this end, a low noise, high-sensitivity CMOS contact imager is presented for the detection of cell cultures coupled directly to the sensor surface. Design considerations are discussed for the application of neural activity recording of neuronal networks cultured in vitro from dissociated neuron cells. A 128 × 128 CMOS imager implemented in 0.18-um CMOS technology is presented featuring the implementation of the active reset technique with the use of the active column sensor pixel architecture.