In vitro hematocrit measurement using spectrally encoded flow cytometry

Biomed Opt Express. 2016 Sep 27;7(10):4327-4334. doi: 10.1364/BOE.7.004327. eCollection 2016 Oct 1.

Abstract

Measuring key physiological parameters of small blood samples extracted from patients could be useful for real-time clinical diagnosis at the point of care. An important parameter required from all blood tests is the blood hematocrit, a measure of the fractional volume occupied by the red cells within the blood. In this work, we present a method for in vitro evaluation of hematocrit based on the data acquired using spectrally encoded flow cytometry. Analysis of the reflectance confocal images of blood within a flow chamber resulted in an error as low as 1.7% in the measured hematocrit. The technique could be used as part of an in vitro diagnostic system that measures important blood parameters at the point of care.

Keywords: (170.1470) Blood or tissue constituent monitoring; (170.1530) Cell analysis; (170.1790) Confocal microscopy.