Measuring sickle cell morphology during blood flow

During a sickle cell crisis in sickle cell anemia patients, deoxygenated red blood cells may change their mechanical properties and block small blood vessels, causing pain, local tissue damage, and possibly organ failure. Measuring the structural and morphological changes in sickle cells is important for understanding the factors contributing to vessel blockage and for developing an effective treatment. In this work, we image blood cells from sickle cell anemia patients using spectrally encoded flow cytometry, and analyze the interference patterns between reflections from the cell membranes. Using a numerical simulation for calculating the interference pattern obtained from a model of a red blood cell, we propose an analytical expression for the three-dimensional shape of characteristic sickle cells and compare our results to a previously suggested model. Our imaging approach offers new means for analyzing the morphology of sickle cells, and could be useful for studying their unique physiological and biomechanical properties.