Complete blood count (cbc) is collection of some of the most commonly required clinical tests to assess the manifestations of pathological conditions in blood frequently prescribed by doctors for clinical diagnosis and prognosis. it provides vital information about several components of blood including hematocrit, density of hemoglobin and counts of platelet (plt), red blood cell (rbc), and white blood cell (wbc). in principle, any deviation from the normal range of blood composition is a true indicator of a health disorder, disease progression and response to treatment. for example, an increase in wbc count beyond the normal range can be an indicator for leukemia (malignancy of blood). likewise, a decrease in wbc count below the normal range is a typical response of autoimmune disorder (a side effect of chemo- and radio- therapy). similarly, the decreasing trend of platelet count is strong indicator of severe dengue fever. the existing clinical methods for cbc test are voluminous and prohibitively expensive due to the requirements of sophisticated instrumentation (such as automated hematology analyzer or flow cytometer) and trained personnel. hence, it fails to cater vast majority of indian population due to economic differences, and in localities that are less urbanized. to address this problem, we propose a unique low cost point-of-care blood cell counting platform. the method exploits the difference in densities of cells for separation in transparent microfluidic channels and implements label-free imaging method for counting the separated cells within the microfluidic disc. the device is a simple spinning disc to estimate the parameters such as hematocrit, hemoglobin, red blood cell (rbc), white blood cell (wbc), and platelet counts with an accuracy > 95% as compared to an automated hematology analyzer. the major advantages of this device over state of the art include multiple sample testing within a single biodegradable disc, simple design and fabrication techniques, potential automation thereby making it portable and eliminating the need of trained personnel, and most significantly, eliminating any need for downstream processing of the separated blood. the method is cost effective, uses small sample volume and employs a simple operation enabling measurement of total cell counts in blood at home, laboratory, simple clinical setup and in remote health care centers. these results may turn out to be of immense consequence towards developing novel point-of-care hematological analyzers for resource-constrained settings.
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