Multifunctional lab-on-a-chip for blood properties detection with integrated PVDF acoustic transducers: application to malaria biomarkers

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A passive microfluidic device based on crossflow filtration for cell separation measurements: a spectrophotometric characterization

Publication . Faustino, Vera; Catarino, Susana; Pinho, Diana; Lima, Rui A.; Minas, Graça

Microﬂuidic devices have been widely used as a valuable research tool for diagnostic applications. Particularly, they have been related to the successful detection of different diseases and conditions by assessing the mechanical properties of red blood cells (RBCs). Detecting deformability changes in the cells and being able to separate those cells may be a key factor in assuring the success of detection of some blood diseases with diagnostic devices. To detect and separate the chemically modiﬁed RBCs (mimicking disease-infected RBCs) from healthy RBCs, the present work proposes a microﬂuidic device comprising a sequence of pillars with different gaps and nine different outlets used to evaluate the efﬁciency of the device by measuring the optical absorption of the collected samples. This latter measurement technique was tested to distinguish between healthy RBCs and RBCs chemically modiﬁed with glutaraldehyde. The present study indicates that it was possible to detect a slight differences between the samples using an optical absorption spectrophotometric setup. Hence, the proposed microﬂuidic device has the potential to perform in one single step a partial passive separation of RBCs based on their deformability.

2018Journal article

Open access

A comparative study of image processing methods for the assessment of the red blood cells deformability in a microfluidic device

Publication . Faustino, Vera; Catarino, Susana; Pinho, Diana; Minas, Graça; Lima, Rui A.

Red blood cells (RBCs) deformability is a high relevant mechanical property, whose variations are associated with some diseases, such as diabetes and malaria. Therefore, the present study aims to compare different image processing methods for assessing the RBCs deformability in a continuous flow, measured in a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microchannel composed by 15 μm spacing inner pillars. The images were acquired with a high speed camera and analyzed with ImageJ software for tracking and measuring the RBCs deformation index (DI). Additionally, to understand the performance of the software, it was performed a comparison between different image processing tools provided by ImageJ and the best methods for the deformation measurements were selected, considering the measured RBCs number and their DIs. The results show that those image methods significantly affect the number of measured RBCs and their DIs and, therefore, the studies focused on the deformability measurements need to take into account the effect of the image processing methods for avoiding loss of relevant information in the images.

2018Conference object

Open access