Particle deposition in a parallel plate flow chamber

The parallel plate flow chamber is the most widely used device for measuring adhesion to substrates under flow. Typically, cells or particles are perfused through the flow chamber which contains an adhesive substrate at the bottom surface. The concentration of particles at the substrate, Cs, is a function of particle size, position in the flow chamber, chamber geometry and sedimentation velocity. We developed a mathematical model, which relates Cs to these parameters. Under a variety of experimental conditions, we found that Cs predicted by the model is close to that observed experimentally. We used this model to compare the rates of attachment of 10 μm and 5 μm diameter PSGL-1 microspheres to P-selectin. We found that the uncorrected rates of attachment were significantly different. However, normalization of the data with the developed model revealed that the rates of attachment were similar