Abstract
The dynamic response behavior of red blood cells holds the key to understanding red blood cell related diseases. In this regard, an understanding of the physiological functions of erythrocytes is significant before focusing on red blood cell aggregation in the microcirculatory system. In this work, we present a theoretical model for a photoacoustic signal that occurs when deformed red blood cells pass through a microfluidic channel. Using a Green's function approach, the photoacoustic pressure wave is obtained analytically by solving a combined Navier-Stokes and photoacoustic equation system. The photoacoustic wave expression includes determinant parameters for the cell deformability such as plasma viscosity, density, and red blood cell aggregation, as well as involving laser parameters such as beamwidth, pulse duration, and repetition rate. The effects of aggregation on blood rheology are also investigated. The results presented by this study show good agreements with the experimental ones in the literature. The comprehensive analytical solution of the extended photoacoustic transport model including a modified Morse type potential function sheds light on the dynamics of aggregate formation and demonstrates that the profile of a photoacoustic pressure wave has the potential for detecting and characterizing red blood cell aggregation.
Highlights
Red blood cells (RBCs) have the deformation capability in microcapillaries
The small changes in the morphology of RBCs are characterized by the absorption-based contrast of photoacoustic (PA) imaging which is complementary to other imaging modalities in terms of contrast mechanism, penetration, spatial resolution, and temporal resolution [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]
Our results show that the magnitude of PA signal does not change with different plasma viscosity values as shown in Fig. 8, as expected, in the presence of first and second source terms
Summary
Red blood cells (RBCs) have the deformation capability in microcapillaries. RBC membrane allows cells to squeeze, deform, and reform through capillaries. The geometric shape of RBC provides an efficient transport through narrow capillaries and increases the surface area in order to maximize oxygen transport. The alternation of the cell membrane deformability under some disease conditions is significantly different than healthy ones [1, 2]. The RBCs of sickle cell disease have the most significant loss of deformability because of having different morphologies depending on its density [3,4,5,6]. The small changes in the morphology of RBCs are characterized by the absorption-based contrast of photoacoustic (PA) imaging which is complementary to other imaging modalities in terms of contrast mechanism, penetration, spatial resolution, and temporal resolution [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]
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