Dynamic deformation capability of a red blood cell under a cyclically reciprocating shear stress

Red blood cells (RBCs) in the cardiovascular devices are exposed to varying degree of the shear stress from all the directions. However the RBCs' deformability or the deformation capability under such a shear stress is not well understood. In this study, we designed and built a system that can induce a cyclically reciprocating shear stress to a RBC suspension. The arm of the cyclically reciprocating shear stress device was attached to the upper piece of the parallel glass plates between which a suspension of human RBCs (1% hematocrit whole blood diluted in a 32 weight% dextran phosphate buffer solution) was contained. The cyclic reciprocating motion of the upper glass plate of 3.0 mm stroke length was produced using a slider-crank shaft mechanism that was linked to an eccentric cam-motor system. Each rotation of the motor produced a 3.0 mm stroke each in the forward and backward direction of the slider block. The clearance between the two glass plates was adjusted to 30 micrometer. The cyclic reciprocating glass plate apparatus was attached to a light microscope stage (IX71 Olympus with x40 objective lens) for illumination with a 350 watt metal halide light source. A high speed camera (MEMREMCAM fx-K3 Nac, 5000 frames per second with shutter kept open) was attached to the microscope to capture the deformation process of the RBCs under cyclic shear stress. The preliminary result indicated that the correlation between the amplitude of the maximum shear stress and the RBCs' deformability. This indicates a potential application of the cyclic reciprocating device to evaluate the temporal response of the RBCs deformability prior to its destruction. The future study will focus on the study of the relative velocity of the erythrocytes with respect to the velocity of the reciprocating plate.