Integration of fluctuation spectroscopy into a microfluidic platform for novel cellular viscoelastic measurement

This paper demonstrates the integration of fluctuation spectroscopy into a microfluidic platform, which enables a novel high-throughput measurement of viscoelastic parameters for μm-sized soft objects such as red blood cells (RBCs) flowing in a microfluidic channel. Utilizing high-speed/precise feedback position control of a RBC inside a narrow microfluidic channel, we successfully performed fluctuation spectroscopy, which is called flicker spectroscopy, sequentially combined with the conventional constriction-passage method. The result shows implicit correlations between mechanical parameters obtained from these two different measurements, providing indications to full information of viscosity and elasticity of a RBC.