Abstract
An on-chip deformability checker is proposed to improve the velocity–deformation correlation for red blood cell (RBC) evaluation. RBC deformability has been found related to human diseases, and can be evaluated based on RBC velocity through a microfluidic constriction as in conventional approaches. The correlation between transit velocity and amount of deformation provides statistical information of RBC deformability. However, such correlations are usually only moderate, or even weak, in practical evaluations due to limited range of RBC deformation. To solve this issue, we implemented three constrictions of different width in the proposed checker, so that three different deformation regions can be applied to RBCs. By considering cell responses from the three regions as a whole, we practically extend the range of cell deformation in the evaluation, and could resolve the issue about the limited range of RBC deformation. RBCs from five volunteer subjects were tested using the proposed checker. The results show that the correlation between cell deformation and transit velocity is significantly improved by the proposed deformability checker. The absolute values of the correlation coefficients are increased from an average of 0.54 to 0.92. The effects of cell size, shape and orientation to the evaluation are discussed according to the experimental results. The proposed checker is expected to be useful for RBC evaluation in medical practices.
Highlights
The relations between the deformability of human cells, especially red blood cells (RBCs), and diseases have been investigated and reported in the last few decades [1,2,3]
It was found that the proposed method consistently improves the correlations between transit velocity and deformation of the RBCs compared with single constrictions
According to the experimental results, the method significantly improves the correlations between the transit velocity and cell deformation
Summary
The relations between the deformability of human cells, especially red blood cells (RBCs), and diseases have been investigated and reported in the last few decades [1,2,3]. Reid et al showed a significant difference of RBC deformability between patients with peripheral vascular disease and normal subjects [5]. Among all different cell evaluations, the evaluation with a constriction channel in a microfluidic device has become one of the most popular approaches because of its simplicity and high-throughput. The idea of such microfluidic approaches is to let cells pass through a constriction channel whose cross-section area is smaller than the size of the cells. Correlations between transit velocity and cell deformation are usually not very solid (|R| < 0.7), and are sometimes even weak (|R| < 0.5), due to the limited range of cell deformation. The proposed RBC deformability checker aims to resolve the problem of the low correlation and to advance RBC evaluation in medical practices
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