High-speed sensing of microliter-order whole-blood viscosity using laser-induced capillary wave

Abstract

The present paper introduces an innovative contact-free optical viscosity measurement technique, laser-induced capillary wave (LiCW) using pulsed YAG laser as a heating source, to measure whole-blood viscosity with only a microliter-order sample volume and measurement time on the millisecond order. In this method, interfering pulsed laser beams heat a whole-blood sample and generate a capillary wave, the amplitude of which is less than 10 nm with wavelength of 80–100 μm in the present experiment, caused by a spatially sinusoidal temperature distribution. The damped oscillation of the capillary wave, which is detected by a diffracted probing laser beam at the heated area, provides information regarding the viscosity and surface tension of the whole blood. To demonstrate the validity of the present laser-induced capillary wave viscometer, the viscosity of human whole blood taken from two healthy donors having different hematocrit values was measured using 90 μl sample volumes at 37°C. To consider the feasibility of the present technique for blood rheological studies, we discuss the characteristics of LiCW regarding the non-Newtonian behavior of blood, the velocity boundary layer, the existence of a free surface, and the temperature increase of the blood, and also demonstrate the capability of the method to sense the temporal evolution of blood viscosity with sampling frequency of 0.25 Hz.