Development of a Fully Monolithic Microfluidic Device for Complete Blood Count

This thesis describes a monolithic microfluidic device capable of complete blood constituent enumeration from whole blood. For the first time, on-chip sample processing (e.g. dilution, lysis, and filtration) and downstream single cell analysis were fully integrated on device to enable complete blood cell count. The microfluidic device consists of two parallel sub-systems that perform sample processing and electrical analysis for simultaneous measurement of red (RBC) and white blood cell (WBC) parameters. The system provides a modular and adaptable environment capable of handling solutions of various viscosities and mixing ratios and features a new `offset' filter configuration for increased experimental duration. RBC concentration, mean corpuscular volume (MCV), cell distribution width, WBC concentration and differential are determined by electrical impedance measurements. Experimental characterization results of 97,305 WBCs and 104,735 RBCs from 10 patient blood samples demonstrate that the system is capable of performing high volume enumeration and complete blood count with accuracy.M.A.S