Red blood cell study at different temperatures with holographic imaging informatics

Abstract

The optimal functionality of red blood cells is closely associated with the surrounding environment. This study was undertaken to analyze the changes in membrane profile, mean hemoglobin content (MCH), and cell membrane fluctuations (CMF) of healthy red blood cells (RBC) at various temperatures. The temperature was elevated from 17℃ to 41℃ within a duration of less than one hour, and the holograms were recorded by a CCD camera in an off-axis digital holographic microscopy(DHM) system. After hologram reconstruction, we extracted single RBCs and evaluated their morphologically related features (projected surface area and sphericity coefficient), MCH, and CMF. We observed that elevating the temperature results in changes in the 3D profile. Since CMF amplitude is highly correlated to the bending curvature of RBC membrane, temperature-induced shape changes can alter CMF’s map and amplitude

mainly larger fluctuations appear in dimple area at a higher temperature. Regardless of the shape changes, no alterations in MCH were seen with temperature variation.