Determination of Red Blood Cell fatigue using electrodeformation

In this work, we used electrodeformation (ED) [1] as a new strategy to evaluate the fatigue of healthy human Red Blood Cells (RBCs). Using dielectrophoresis (DEP) forces, we submitted RBCs to a series of elongation and relaxation cycles to model their mechanical stress in the blood circulation and we used their relaxation time as a marker to evaluate their fatigue. In this paper, we first investigated the dependency of the RBC mechanical response upon the experimental parameters, such as the viscosity η_out of the external medium, the amplitude ΔV of the applied voltage, the duration of the solicitation t_sol, the number of solicitations N as well as the resting time t_rest between two solicitations. The impact of these parameters was evaluated through the analysis of both RBC deformation index D and relaxation time τ. Finally, the optimization of these parameters was used to monitor RBC fatigue.