In this new method for studying the shape recovery of deformed red blood cells, three optical traps ("optical tweezers") induce a parachute-shaped red cell deformation, which is comparable to the deformation in small capillaries. The shape recovery is recorded, and a relaxation time is obtained for each individual red blood cell. The sensitivity of this technique for the detection of differences in relaxation times is demonstrated on subpopulations of density-separated red blood cells: "young" cells have shorter (162 ms) and "old" cells have longer (353 ms) relaxation times compared with the total population (271 ms). The relaxation time is remarkably shorter (114 ms) when the plasma surrounding the cells is replaced by a phosphate-buffered saline solution. The main advantages of this technique are the relatively short measuring and preparation time and the physiological type of deformation and shape recovery in which all relevant cell properties play a role. Therefore, especially when automated further, the technique may be a powerful tool for the study of (sub)populations of pathological red blood cells.

In this study we present experimental data on the inhomogeneous distribution of platelets in polyethylene tubes (200 microns diam) based on the inverse Fåhraeus effect for platelets. It is shown that platelets are expelled toward the red blood cell-depleted marginal layer near the tube wall by mutual interaction with erythrocytes. By means of a straightforward model, the near-wall concentration of platelets could be estimated from measurements on the average tubular platelet concentration. The marginal layer originates from the hydrodynamic interaction of the deformable erythrocytes with the tube wall. If the tube diameter is large compared with the size of the erythrocytes, the lateral migration effects can effectively be scaled on the absolute distance between the erythrocytes and the tube wall. This results in the main conclusion that the near-wall concentration of platelets is significantly enhanced up to about seven times the average concentration, practically irrespective of the tube diameter in the range of 100-500 microns. Where comparable, the results of this study are in accordance with experimental data of other authors.

The motion of a deformable drop in linear unidirectional shear flow close to a fixed wall is considered using a boundary integral technique for Stokes flow. This problem is solved numerically to circumvent the limitations of existing analytical models, especially in the region near the wall. The lateral and longitudinal disturbance velocities of the particle were calculated and compared with analytical approximations. Although analytical theories give reasonable predictions, large deviations occur at small wall distances and large particle deformations. This is mainly due to the fact that the altered orientation and deformation of the particle, arising from the presence of a wall, is disregarded in all analytical models.

In the present literature on ektacytometry, small angle light scattering by ellipsoidal red blood cells is commonly approximated by Fraunhofer diffraction. Calculations on a sphere with the size and relative refractive index of a red cell, however, show that Fraunhofer diffraction deviates significantly from exact Mie theory. Anomalous diffraction is found to be a much better approximation. The anomalous diffraction theory is used to calculate the intensity distribution of the light scattered by an ellipsoidally deformed red blood cell. The derived expression shows that the ellipticity of isointensity curves in forward scattered light are equal to the ellipticity of the red blood cell. The theoretical expression is fitted to the intensity patterns measured with an ektacytometer. For the small observation angles used in ektacytometry, the experimental results confirm the validity of the anomalous diffraction approach.

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