Watching bubbles -- Image based decision making in microdroplets

Microdroplets in microfluidics provides a powerful platform for chemical and biochemical processing and analysis as it combines the control and small volumes of microfluidics with the discrete compartmentalisation of droplets. Microdroplets has spawned a range of commercial applications including droplet digital PCR, single cell sequencing and antibody discovery due to the large numbers of droplets which can be created, manipulated and analysed, even from a small starting sample. Most of this analysis has taken the form of fluorescence, which can provide detailed molecular level information from inside the droplets. However, this requires specific molecular labels to be added (and in many cases developed) which can be expensive, the probes can interact with the sample, and it only provides limited information.
By "looking at" the droplets using high speed microscopic imaging we can expand the types of measurements we can do and extract additional information from the system. In this talk I'll discuss some of the advances in using images for decision making within microfluidic devices and how this can be useful beyond academic research.