Interfacial energy driven distinctive pattern formation during the drying of blood droplets

Dried blood droplet morphology may potentially serve as an alternative biomarker for several patho-physiological conditions. The deviant properties of the red blood cells and the abnormal composition of diseased samples are hypothesized to manifest through unique cell-cell and cell-substrate interactions leading to different morphological patterns. Identifying distinctive morphological trait from a large sample size and proposing confirmatory explanations are necessary to establish the signatory pattern as a potential biomarker to differentiate healthy and diseased samples.

Comprehensive experimental investigation was undertaken to identify the signatory dried blood droplet patterns. The corresponding image based analysis was in turn used to differentiate the blood samples with a specific haematological disorder "Thalassaemia" from healthy ones. Relevant theoretical analysis explored the role of cell-surface and cell-cell interactions pertinent to the formation of the distinct dried patterns.

The differences observed in the dried blood patterns, specifically the radial crack lengths, were found to eventuate from the differences in the overall interaction energies of the system. A first-generation theoretical analysis, with the mean field approximation, also confirmed similar outcome and justified the role of the different physico-chemical properties of red blood cells in diseased samples resulting in shorter radial cracks.