This paper presents a new control scheme to compensate for the amplitude- and rate-dependent hysteresis behavior of a piezo-driven parallel stage developed for the application of biological cell manipulation. A variable phase-delay model with variable gain is established to describe the nonlinear hysteresis of the system. The proposed controller integrates an inverse model-based preview feedforward control and a PID feedback control, which has a simple structure and is ease of real-time implementation. The effectiveness of the preview-based control is demonstrated through experimental studies. Results show that the combined control scheme suppresses the tracking error by more than 11 times compared to the stand-alone PID control. It provides a baseline of practical control of the piezostage system for biological cell manipulation. © 2010 IEEE.