Kang Yang Jun
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chosun University, 309 Pilmun-daero, Dong-gu, Gwangju 61452, Korea.
Micromachines (Basel). 2022 Jun 8;13(6):909. doi: 10.3390/mi13060909.
The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), which has been commonly used to detect physiological and pathological diseases in clinical settings, has been quantified using an interface in a vertical tube. However, previous methods do not provide biophysical information on blood during the ESR test. Therefore, it is necessary to quantify the individual contributions in terms of viscosity and pressure. In this study, to quantify RBC sedimentation, the image intensity (Ib) and interface (β) were obtained by analyzing the blood flow in the microfluidic channels. Based on threshold image intensity, the corresponding interfaces of RBCs (Ib > 0.15) and diluent (Ib < 0.15) were employed to obtain the viscosities (µb, µ0) and junction pressures (Pb, P0). Two coefficients (CH1, CH2) obtained from the empirical formulas (µb = µ0 [1 + CH1], Pb = P0 [1 + CH2]) were calculated to quantify RBC sedimentation. The present method was then adopted to detect differences in RBC sedimentation for various suspended blood samples (healthy RBCs suspended in dextran solutions or plasma). Based on the experimental results, four parameters (µ0, P0, CH1, and CH2) are considered to be effective for quantifying the contributions of the hematocrit and diluent. Two coefficients exhibited more consistent trends than the conventional ESR method. In conclusion, the proposed method can effectively detect RBC sedimentation.
红细胞沉降率（ESR）在临床环境中常用于检测生理和病理疾病，它是通过垂直管中的一个界面进行量化的。然而，以前的方法在ESR测试过程中并未提供关于血液的生物物理信息。因此，有必要从粘度和压力方面量化各自的贡献。在本研究中，为了量化红细胞沉降，通过分析微流控通道中的血流获得了图像强度（Ib）和界面（β）。基于阈值图像强度，利用红细胞（Ib > 0.15）和稀释剂（Ib < 0.15）的相应界面来获得粘度（µb，µ0）和连接压力（Pb，P0）。计算从经验公式（µb = µ0 [1 + CH1]，Pb = P0 [1 + CH2]）获得的两个系数（CH1，CH2）以量化红细胞沉降。然后采用本方法检测各种悬浮血液样本（悬浮在右旋糖酐溶液或血浆中的健康红细胞）的红细胞沉降差异。基于实验结果，四个参数（µ0，P0，CH1和CH2）被认为对量化血细胞比容和稀释剂的贡献有效。与传统的ESR方法相比，两个系数呈现出更一致的趋势。总之，所提出的方法可以有效地检测红细胞沉降。
