Digital microfluidic biochips (DMFBs) have been widely used in biochemical experiments with high safety requirements. To ensure the reliability of the experiment, it is necessary to use test droplets to perform off-line and on-line testing for DMFBs. Previous random search algorithms are not fully combined with heuristic information, which increases the randomness of search progress and thus results in suboptimal test paths. To solve this problem, a new test path optimization method based on priority strategy and genetic algorithm is proposed, which reduces the blindness of test path search and improves the convergence effect of the random search algorithm. In this method, priority levels are randomly assigned to the edges of the chip test model. With the fluid constraints, a test droplet moves to the untraversed adjacent edge with the highest priority. If all adjacent edges have been traversed, Floyd algorithm is used to determine the shortest path from the test droplet to untraversed edges, and guide the test droplet to move along the shortest path. After determining the test path according to priority strategy, the priority level on the test path is optimized by genetic algorithm, so that the length of the path is gradually reduced by iteration. In this paper, a single test droplet is used to test given chips. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is efficient, and the shortest path length is equal to the length of the Euler path, indicating that the shortest test path has reached the optimal value. Moreover, for the “deadlock” problem of droplets in on-line testing process, we also provide a solution by using backoff operation.

中文翻译：

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一种优化数字微流控生物芯片测试路径的高效算法

数字微流控生物芯片（DMFB）已广泛应用于安全性要求较高的生化实验中。为保证实验的可靠性，需要使用测试液滴对DMFBs进行离线和在线测试。以前的随机搜索算法没有与启发式信息完全结合，这增加了搜索过程的随机性，从而导致了次优的测试路径。针对这一问题，提出了一种基于优先级策略和遗传算法的测试路径优化新方法，降低了测试路径搜索的盲目性，提高了随机搜索算法的收敛效果。在这种方法中，优先级被随机分配给芯片测试模型的边缘。在流体约束条件下，测试液滴以最高优先级移动到未遍历的相邻边缘。如果所有相邻边都被遍历，则使用Floyd算法确定测试液滴到未遍历边缘的最短路径，并引导测试液滴沿最短路径移动。根据优先级策略确定测试路径后，通过遗传算法优化测试路径上的优先级，通过迭代逐步减小路径长度。在本文中，单个测试液滴用于测试给定的芯片。实验结果表明，该算法是有效的，最短路径长度等于欧拉路径的长度，表明最短测试路径已经达到最优值。此外，针对在线检测过程中液滴的“死锁”问题，