Using Recurrent Neural Networks to Reconstruct Temperatures from Simulated Fluorescent Data for use in Bio-Microfluidics

Many biological systems have a narrow temperature range of operation, meaning high accuracy and spatial distribution level are needed to study these systems. Most temperature sensors cannot meet both the accuracy and spatial distribution required in the microfluidic systems that are often used to study these systems in isolation. This paper introduces a neural network called the Multi-Directional Fluorescent Temperature Long Short-Term Memory Network (MFTLSTM) that can accurately calculate the temperature at every pixel in a fluorescent image to improve upon the standard fitting practice and other machine learning methods use to relate fluorescent data to temperature. This network takes advantage of the nature of heat diffusion in the image to achieve an accuracy of ±0.0199 K RMSE within the temperature range of 298K to 308 K with simulated data. When applied to experimental data from a 3D printed microfluidic device with a temperature range of 290 K to 380 K, it achieved an accuracy of ±0.0684 K RMSE. These results have the potential to allow high temperature resolution in biological systems than is available in many microfluidic devices.