Figure 1.

Scheme of an RT-DC measurement of a peripheral blood sample. 50 μL of venous citrate-anticoagulated blood is diluted and mixed gently in 950 μL of measurement buffer consisting of phosphate-buffered saline and methyl cellulose. The blood cell suspension is pumped through a microfluidic chip mounted on an inverted microscope, and single-cell images are processed in real time to obtain the physical parameters of each cell. During postprocessing, cell populations of interest are manually gated according to brightness, and the physical properties of each population are analyzed.