Design of an automated cell batch microinjection system based on magnetic tweezers for zebrafish embryos

Batch microinjection significantly enhances throughput and reproducibility in gene delivery and developmental studies, thereby accelerating the advancement of intelligent experimentation in the life sciences. In this work, we propose a novel visual-guided automated batch microinjection system based on magnetic tweezers, designed for zebrafish embryos. The system enables rapid and precise cell reorientation and puncture by integrating a microfluidic chip with coupled fluidic and magnetic actuation for cell manipulation. To address the challenge of robust perception in a narrow microscopic field, we introduce a microscopic manipulation perception network (MMPN), which incorporates a dual-backbone architecture and an attention mechanism to enhance feature extraction and recognition accuracy. Experimental validation demonstrates a detection mean average precision (mAP) of 98.8% and a segmentation accuracy of 98.4%. The proposed system achieves an average operation time of 33.8 seconds per cell, with a cell survival rate of 88% and a reorientation error as low as 2.1^∘. Furthermore, successful fluorescent protein expression in zebrafish larvae confirms the effectiveness of the gene transfer. These results highlight the potential to substantially improve efficiency and reproducibility compared to manual injection. Future work will focus on extending its applicability to a broader range of cell types and enabling long-term biological studies.