Measurement of erythrocyte deformability by uniaxial stretching -Influence on apparent Young's modulus and time constant by inner viscosity-

Abstract

In order to clarify the property of blood microcirculation, it is very important to comprehend the deformability of erythrocytes which occupy about 45 % of the blood volume. By tensile test to an erythrocyte using micropipettes in the microscope, an apparent Young's modulus was calculated based on Hooke's low and a time constant of an erythrocyte's shape recovering process was calculated based on Kelvin model as an index of its deformability. In this study, the influence of inner viscosity of erythrocytes to the physical quantities was confirmed experimentally with erythrocyte ghost of inner viscosity adjusted by using isotonic solution of dextran and so on. As a result, it was found that apparent Young's modulus was not changed by the change of inner viscosity of erythrocytes, while time constant of shape recovering was decreased, which had a good agreement with Kelvin model in changing trend of physical quantities.