Human erythrocyte sizing and deformability study by laser flow cytometer

An erythrocyte size and deformability measurement method using flow cytometric technique is described in this paper. The instrument employed is a slit scanning based laser flow cytometer. The measurement is made of laser absorption. Native erythrocytes, rigid cells with different extent fixation, and calibration particles are studied. It has been found that the scanning pulse width has a good linear relationship with the size of the particles, scanning pulse height is however not linearly proportional to the particle size. It has also been found that the deformation of fresh erythrocytes in the focused flow system is insignificant.