Dried blood drops on vertical surfaces

We present an experimental study of patterns formed by evaporating water-diluted blood droplets on a vertical surface. Three significant morphological features were observed in vertical droplet deposits: (1) The highest concentration of non-volatile molecules is consistently deposited in the lower part of the droplet, regardless of erythrocyte concentration. (2) The central region of deposits decreases rapidly with hematocrit; (3) At high erythrocyte concentrations (36-40% HCT), a broad coating of blood serum is produced in the upper part of the deposit. These findings are supported by the radial intensity profile, the relative thickness of the crown, the aspect ratio of the deformation, the relative area of the central region, and the Entropy of the Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix Entropy (GLCM). Moreover, we explore the pattern formation during the drying of vertical blood drops. We found that hematocrit concentration has a significant impact on droplet drying dynamics. Finally, we conducted a proof-of-concept test to investigate the impact of vertical droplet evaporation on blood droplets with varying lipid concentrations. The results revealed that it is possible to differentiate between deposits with normal, slightly elevated, and moderately elevated lipid levels using only the naked eye.PMID:38160474 | DOI:10.1016/j.colsurfb.2023.113716

Source: Colloids and Surfaces - December 31, 2023 Category: Biotechnology Authors: Roxana Belen P érez Hidalgo Jos ías N Molina-Courtois Yojana J P Carre ón Orlando D íaz-Hernández Jorge Gonz ález-Gutiérrez Source Type: research