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Updated: Oct 10, 2025
Controlled Microfluidic Environment for Dynamic Investigation of Red Blood Cell Aggregation
Published on: June 4, 2015
Ultrasound simulation of blood with different red blood cell aggregations and concentrations
Keyan Wu1, Xun Lang1, Yufeng Zhang1
1Department of Electronic Engineering, Information School, Yunnan University, Kunming, Yunnan, China.
Background:
Considerable progress of ultrasound simulation on blood has enhanced the characterizing of red blood cell (RBC) aggregation.
Objective:
A novel simulation method aims at modeling the blood with different RBC aggregations and concentrations is proposed.
Methods:
The modeling process is as follows: (i) A three-dimensional scatterer model is first built by a mapping with a Hilbert space-filling curve from the one-dimensional scatterer distribution. (ii) To illustrate the relationship between the model parameters and the RBC aggregation level, a variety of blood samples are prepared and scanned to acquire their radiofrequency signals in-vitro. (iii) The model parameters are determined by matching the Nakagami-distribution characteristics of envelope signals simulated from the model with those measured from the blood samples.
Results:
Nakagami metrics m estimated from 15 kinds of blood samples (hematocrits of 20%, 40%, 60% and plasma concentrations of 15%, 30%, 45%, 60%, 75%) are compared with metrics estimated by their corresponding models (each with different eligible parameters). Results show that for the three hematocrit levels, the mean and standard deviation of the root-mean-squared deviations of m are 0.27 ± 0.0026, 0.16 ± 0.0021, 0.12 ± 0.0018 respectively.
Conclusion:
The proposed simulation model provides a viable data source to evaluate the performance of the ultrasound-based methods for quantifying RBC aggregation.
