High-throughput red blood cell deformability measurements

At the capillary and tissue level, red blood cells (RBCs) must deform to pass through channels with diameters smaller than their own major diameter and thereby provide oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange. RBCs have little variation in size and so differences in RBC shear stiffness can have immense impact on microcirculation. RBC deformability is also a marker for several diseases. We have developed a system which can quantify the deformability of thousands of RBCs in just minutes. We take a 10 µL drop of diluted RBCs from fresh blood as input and flow them at fairly high speed through a 7 x 7 micron channel. High-speed imaging and automated image analysis are used to quantify their shape. This shape is then compared to high-fidelity, 3D simulations and the comparison yields quantitative measure of individual RBC shear modulus.

Reference

Amir Saadat, Diego A. Huyke, Diego I. Oyarzun, Paulina V. Escobar, Ingrid H. Øvreeide, Eric SG Shaqfeh, and Juan G. Santiago. "A system for the high-throughput measurement of the shear modulus distribution of human red blood cells" Lab on a Chip 20, no. 16 (2020): 2927-2936.