Affiliations: Department of Laboratory Medicine, College of Medicine, Korea University, Seoul, Korea | Nanoentek Inc., Seoul, Korea | College of Bionano Technology, Gachon Bionano Research Institute, Kyungwon University, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Do, Korea | School of Mechanical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea
Note: [] Corresponding author: Chae Seung Lim, Department of Laboratory Medicine, College of Medicine, Korea University Guro Hospital, Seoul, Korea, Tel.: +82 2 2626 3245; E-mail: [email protected]
Note: [] Corresponding author: Sehyun Shin, Ph.D, School of Mechanical Engineering, Korea University Anam-dong, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 136-713, Korea. Tel.: +82 2 3290 3377; E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: Since Landsteiner's discovery of ABO blood groups, RBC agglutination has been one of the most important immunohematologic techniques for ABO and RhD blood groupings. The conventional RBC agglutination grading system for RhD blood typings relies on macroscopic reading, followed by the assignment of a grade ranging from (-) to (4+) to the degree of red blood cells clumping. However, with the new scoring method introduced in this report, microscopically captured cell images of agglutinated RBCs, placed in a microchannel chip, are used for analysis. Indeed, the cell images' pixel number first allows the differentiation of agglutinated and non-agglutinated red blood cells. Finally, the ratio of agglutinated RBCs per total RBC counts (CRAT) from 90 captured images is then calculated. During the trial, it was observed that the agglutinated group's CRAT was significantly higher (3.77−0.003) than that of the normal control (0). Based on these facts, it was established that the microchannel method was more suitable for the discrimination between agglutinated RBCs and non-agglutinated RhD negative, and thus more reliable for the grading of RBCs agglutination than the conventional method.
