CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Ektacytometry techniques quantifies red blood cells (RBCs) deformability by measuring theelongation of suspended RBCs subjected to shear stress. Raw shear stress elongation plotsare difficult to understand, thus most research papers apply data reduction methods characterizingthe relationship between curve fitting. Our approach works with the naturallygenerated photometrically recorded time series of the diffraction pattern of several millionof RBCs subjected to shear stress, and applies nonlinear quantifiers to study the fluctuationsof these elongations. The development of new quantitative methods is crucial for restrictingthe subjectivity in the study of the cells behavior, mainly if they are capable of analyze atthe same time biological and mechanical aspects of the cells in flowing conditions andcompare their dynamics. A patented optical system called Erythrocyte Rheometer wasused to evaluate viscoelastic properties of erythrocytes by Ektacytometry. To analyze celldynamics we used the technique of Time Delay Coordinates, False Nearest Neighbors, theforecasting procedure proposed by Sugihara and May, and Hurst exponent. The resultshave expressive meaning on comparing healthy samples with parasite treated samples,suggesting that apparent noise associated with deterministic chaos can be used not only todistinguish but also to characterize biological and mechanical aspects of cells at the sametime in flowing conditions.