Flow of red blood cells through microchannel with a confluence

• Author(s): Vladimir, Leble ; Lima, R. ; Fernandes, Carla S. ; Dias, Ricardo P.
• Date: 2011
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/7066
• Origin: Biblioteca Digital do IPB
• Subject(s): Red blood cells; Velocity profiles; Confocal micro-PTV; Confluence; Microchannel
• Document Type: Conference Object
• Language: English

Description

Over the years micro-visualization techniques have been used to investigate in vitro blood flow through straight microchannels with dimensions close to in vivo capillaries. However, a few detailed studies have been performed in complex in vitro microvascular networks composed by diverging and converging bifurcations. The main purpose of present work is to show the application of a confocal micro-PTV system to track both flourescent particles and red blood cells (RBCs) through a rectangular polydimethysiloxane (PDMS) microchannel with a confluence. The measurements of the flow behaviour of trace particles suspended in pure water and RBCs in concentrated suspensions were performed in the surroundings of a confluence. After performing simulations with the commercial finite element software package POLYFLOW®, some experimental results were compared with the numerical ones. Experimental results for pure water were in a good agreement with numerical results. Overall, the RBCs velocities were higher than those for fluorescent particles which suggest that RBC deformability and cell-free layer formation around the apex of the confluence may play an important role on the observed deviations