Marker-free automatic quantification of red blood cell fluctuations with different storage periods by holographic imaging

Abstract

This paper overviews the methods to quantitatively measure the cell membrane fluctuation (CMF) rate of red blood cells (RBCs) with different storage periods with millisecond temporal sensitivity at the single-cell level by using marker-free holographic imaging techniques. We quantitatively measured fluctuations in the discocyte shape of RBCs membrane, ring and dimple in the case of storage lesion with time-lapse phase images of RBCs. Our experimental results demonstrate that normal RBCs with a discocyte shape become stiffer with storage period and there is a significant negative correlation between CMFs and the sphericity coefficient, which describes the RBCs morphology. Correlation between CMF and projected surface area is also performed.