Abstract
The elasticity of erythrocytes is an important criterion to evaluate the quality of blood. This paper presents a novel research on erythrocytes’ elasticity with the application of optical tweezers and the finite element method (FEM) during blood storage. In this work, the erythrocytes with different in vitro times were linearly stretched by trapping force using optical tweezers and the time dependent elasticity of erythrocytes was investigated. The experimental results indicate that the membrane shear moduli of erythrocytes increased with the increasing in vitro time, namely the elasticity was decreasing. Simultaneously, an erythrocyte shell model with two parameters (membrane thickness h and membrane shear modulus H) was built to simulate the linear stretching states of erythrocytes by the FEM, and the simulations conform to the results obtained in the experiment. The evolution process was found that the erythrocytes membrane thicknesses were decreasing. The analysis assumes that the partial proteins and lipid bilayer of erythrocyte membrane were decomposed during the in vitro preservation of blood, which results in thin thickness, weak bending resistance, and losing elasticity of erythrocyte membrane. This study implies that the FEM can be employed to investigate the inward mechanical property changes of erythrocyte in different environments, which also can be a guideline for studying the erythrocyte mechanical state suffered from different diseases.
Highlights
In the past few decades, transfusion medicine has developed dramatically.[1,2,3] has blood transfusion been used to rescue excessive hemorrhage, it has been applied to treat the hematonosis widely.[4,5,6] Rapidly growing component blood transfusion has shown favorable clinical application prospects in maximizing efficient utilization of blood.[7]
A linear stretching model of erythrocyte with different storage time was proposed and simulated by finite element method (FEM), via taking account of the influence of cell membrane thickness and cell size on erythrocyte deformation, and the thickness parameter of erythrocyte model was optimized through the comparison of simulations and experiment results
In the present work, the erythrocytes with different in vitro time were linearly stretched by trapping force in optical tweezers and the time dependent elasticity of erythrocytes membrane was investigated via experiment and numerical simulation
Summary
In the past few decades, transfusion medicine has developed dramatically.[1,2,3] has blood transfusion been used to rescue excessive hemorrhage, it has been applied to treat the hematonosis widely.[4,5,6] Rapidly growing component blood transfusion has shown favorable clinical application prospects in maximizing efficient utilization of blood.[7]. K. Liu simulated the tensile experiments of spherical erythrocyte with double parameter Mooney-Rivilin hyperelastic material, and optimized these parameters of the cell model through comparison with experimental results.[20] Suresh S et al investigated the progressive changes of mechanical properties of the erythrocyte infected with the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.[21] To our best knowledge, the previous reports mainly focused on nonlinear stretching simulation of erythrocyte tensile deformation behavior, and few simulation research of linear stretching in the experiment of measuring membrane elasticity was conducted. A linear stretching model of erythrocyte with different storage time was proposed and simulated by FEM, via taking account of the influence of cell membrane thickness and cell size on erythrocyte deformation, and the thickness parameter of erythrocyte model was optimized through the comparison of simulations and experiment results
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