title: Passive deformation analysis of human leukocytes.
abstract: The following analysis presents an experimental and theoretical study of the passive viscoelastic behavior of human leukocytes. Individual neutrophils in EDTA were observed both during their partial aspiration into a small micropipette and after expulsion from a large micropipette where the cell had been totally aspirated and deformed into a sausage shape. To analyze the data, a passive model of leukocyte rheology has been developed consisting of a cortical shell containing a Maxwell fluid which describes the average properties of the cell cytoplasm. The cortical shell represents a crosslinked actin layer near the surface of the cell and is assumed to be under pre-stressed tension. This model can reproduce the results of experiments using micropipette for both short-time small deformation and slow recovery data after large deformation. In addition, a finite element scheme has been established for the same model which shows close agreement with the analytical solution.
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Skalak
authors.forename: K L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Sung
authors.forename: G W
authors.initials: GW
authors.lastname: Schmid-Schönbein
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chien
mesh_terms: D001809:Blood Viscosity; D004548:Elasticity; D006801:Humans; D008560:Membrane Fluidity; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D009504:Neutrophils / Q000502:physiology*; D012212:Rheology; D013314:Stress, Mechanical; D013396:Suction