Figure 1.

a) Schematic of the microfluidic device demonstrating cell alignment and RBC stretching, the direction of flow, and the fixed field-of-view (FOV) of the detector. Cells flowing at random orientation (i) are trapped, aligned via torque experienced in the optical trap and stretched (ii) by the optical trap (OT) until they pass through the trap and relax back to their original shape (iii). b) Antipodal stretching optical forces (F) generated on the two edges of the cell that are in the laser focus on an RBC in the OT²³. c) The FOV with the light intensity measured by the photodetector directly proportional to the oscillating size of the cell blocking the light (Supplementary Video 1).