UNCERTAINTY IN FLOW IMPEDANCE MEASUREMENTS ARISING FROM SHEAR-INDUCED ROTATION OF PARTICLES IN MICROFLUIDIC CHANNELS

Careful discrimination between subpopulations of cells in different tissues is important for monitoring the state of health or diagnosing health disorders. Among the number of different techniques for detection and sorting of cells, impedance-based cytometry is emerging as a complement to the traditional light scattering- and fluorescence-based methods. However, its incipient applications often assume that cells are spherical. We show explicitly ‐ using anti-CD3/ CD28 antibody activated T-lymphocytes ‐ that the deviations from the spherical symmetry result in a considerable increase in the impedance uncertainty which should be accounted for when interpreting the results of measurements.