Injection and Imaging of Achiral Microswimmers in Zebrafish

Abstract: Achieving stable in vivo locomotion is essential for using magnetically actuated microswimmers for biomedical applications; however, while existing microswimmers have excellent motion control in vitro, their motion is greatly hindered inside living organisms. Moreover, previous work had only visually demonstrated in vivo motion through gradient pulling or rolling, but not swimming. This study investigated the injection and imaging of the achiral planar microswimmers (APMs) inside a live zebrafish embryo. The APMs can be actuated under a rotating magnetic field to generate a forward thrust at low Reynolds number environment. Combined with a safe injection technique and clear in vivo imaging at high resolution, it would be possible to control the swimming motion of APMs inside the zebrafish embryo. This work shows the safe injection and the clear imaging of an APM in a transparent zebrafish model, demonstrating the possibility for follow-up in-depth studies of the swimming motion of microswimmers in vivo.