Abstract
The deformability of red blood cells from the same subjects is evaluated by both an atomic force microscope and a microfluidic channel. While the former one measures only the surface deformability due to its limitation of indentation depth, the latter one is utilized for evaluating the global deformability by applying large deformation to a cell during the transit through the channel. Three different values of indentation depth are applied in atomic force microscope evaluation for the stiffness of the outermost, intermediate and deep layers, respectively. On the other hand, the cells are let pass through the microfluidic channel by a constant-pressure-driven flow. The deformability is evaluated based on the transit time of cells through a microchannel. According to the experimental results, significant difference in the intermediate layer and deep layer between the subjects is observed, and the tendency of the two methods are consistent in terms of the distributions of evaluated deformability.
