ИСТИНА

One of the main microrheologic parameters of blood is erythrocyte deformability, which is defined as a measure of the ability of cells to change their shape under the influence of external forces. The deformability of the erythrocytes is conventionally measured using different methods. One of the most convenient methods is based on laser diffraction by red blood cells in shear flow (ektacytometry). In ektacytometry, the information about red cells shapes is extracted from the diffraction patterns that are formed due to low-angle scattering of a laser beam while passing through a sheared low hematocrit RBC suspension. Our studies show that laser ektacytometry can be used not only to measure the mean deformability of the cells in suspension but also to measure the parameters of the distribution of erythrocytes in deformability.