A highly accurate and consistent microfluidic viscometer for continuous blood viscosity measurement

A high-precision microfluidic viscometer with a microfluidic channel array composed of 100 indicating channels is demonstrated in this study. The relative viscosity of the sample fluid could be measured by simply counting the number of the indicating channels occupied by the sample and the reference fluids. Using lumped parameter modeling, an analytical solution of the relative viscosity is derived. In order to evaluate the performance of the developed microfluidic viscometer, the viscosity values obtained by the microfluidic viscometer are compared with the ones obtained by a conventional viscometer. In Newtonian fluid (sodium dodecyl sulfate [SDS] solution) tests, the normalized differences in the viscosities measured by two methods are less than 2.5%. In non-Newtonian fluid (whole blood, 45% hematocrit) tests at various shear rates, the viscosities measured by two methods are evaluated by a regression analysis via power law (). The k values for both the microfluidic viscometer and the conventional viscometer are 12.953 and 13.175, respectively; the n values are 0.797 and 0.807, respectively. The normalized differences in two parameters measured by two methods are less than 2%. Thus, it could be concluded that the microfluidic viscometer developed in this study is capable of measuring viscosity of both Newtonian fluid (SDS solution) and non-Newtonian fluid (whole blood) with a relatively high accuracy in a continuous and near real-time fashion. Furthermore, the viscometer could be potentially employed in cardiopulmonary bypass procedures by continuously monitoring viscosity changes due to blood damages and hemodilution.