Authors:
Inês M. Gonçalves
1
;
2
;
Miguel Madureira
1
;
Inês M. Miranda
3
;
Helmut Schütte
4
;
Ana S. Moita
2
;
5
;
Graça Minas
3
;
Stefan Gassmann
4
and
Rui Lima
1
;
6
Affiliations:
1
METRICS, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal
;
2
IN+, Instituto Superior Téncico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
;
3
Center for MicroElectromechanical Systems (CMEMS-UMinho), University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal
;
4
Jade University of Applied Science, Wilhelmshaven, Germany
;
5
CINAMIL, Departamento de Ciências Exatas e de Engenharia, Academia Militar, Instituto Universitário Militar, Lisboa, Portugal
;
6
CEFT, Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Separation Methods, Blood, Microfluidic Biomedical Devices, Micromilling.
Abstract:
The diagnostic of several diseases can be performed by analysing the blood plasma of the patient. Despite of the extensive research work, there is still the need to improve the current low-cost fabrication techniques and devices for the separation of the plasma from the blood cells. Microfluidic biomedical devices have great potential for that process. Hence, two microfluidic devices made by micromilling and sealed with or without the solvent bonding technique were tested by means of a blood analogue fluid. A high-speed video microscopy system was used for the visualization and acquisition of the analogue fluid flow. Then, the separation of particles and plasma was evaluated using the software ImageJ. The device manufactured by the micromilling process without bonding showed a significant reduction of the amount of cells between the entrance and the exit of the microchannels. However, further analysis and optimizations of the microfluidic devices will be conducted in future work.