A QUANTIFIED METHOD OF DISTINGUISHING PATTERNS IN SESSILE DROPLETS OF WHOLE HUMAN BLOOD
Open Access
- Author:
- Turrigiano, Antonino Vincent
- Graduate Program:
- Bioengineering
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- March 26, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Tak Sing Wong, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
William O Hancock, Committee Member
Pak Kin Wong, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Sessile drop
Blood
Desiccation
Quantitative analysis
Medical
Diagnostic - Abstract:
- The drying of liquid droplets on solid substrates has been a growing area of discussion in modern research due to vast increases of application in industry and nature. There has been an interest to study the dynamics of evaporation of complex fluids like whole blood and plasma following recent studies of patterns of dried droplets. The patterns that result from desiccation in sessile droplets of human whole blood have been a mystery to distinguish quantitatively. Biofluids are of great popularity in the wetting field due to vast applications, but not limited to medical diagnostics, DNA analysis, and forensic investigations. Our experimental results dive deeper into the medical diagnostic field, where we imagine using sessile whole blood droplets from patient’s blood as a method in diagnosing disease in the future. In this study, we aim to develop a quantitative method to distinguish the dried patterns that are formed by human whole blood sessile droplets. By testing fresh samples of whole human blood donated by participants screened for having no known blood disorder, we present a method of testing that could be implemented for clinical settings. Specifically, we can quantify the spatial density of cracking patterns for dried droplets using image analysis, and showed that the cracking density of blood droplets follow a characteristic trend that is consistent among the healthy patients tested. We envision that the method outlined in this thesis could potentially be used to distinguish between normal blood, and blood of an abnormal or diseased state in the future as a simple yet powerful medical diagnostic tool.