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Fractal Dimension of Erythrocyte Membranes: A Highly Useful Precursor for Rapid Morphological Assay

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Abstract

Morphology of erythrocyte membrane has been recognized as an alternative biomarker of several patho-physiological states. Numerous attempts have been made to upgrade the existing method of primitive manual counting, particularly exploring the light scattering properties of erythrocyte. All the techniques are at best semi-empirical and heavily rely on the effectiveness of the statistical correlations. Precisely, this is due to the lack of a non-empirical scale of the so-called “morphological scores”. In this article, fractal dimension of erythrocyte membrane has been used to formulate a suitable scoring scale. Subsequently, the rapid experimental output of flow-cytometry has been functionally related to the mean morphological quantifier of the whole cell population via an optimum neural network model (R2 = 0.98). Moreover, the fractal dimension has been further demonstrated to be an important parameter in early detection of an abnormal patho-physiological state, even without any noticeable poikilocytic transformation in micrometric domain.

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Acknowledgments

The present work has been carried out utilizing the infrastructures developed under the project, entitled “Quantifying morphological alteration of RBC population”, funded by TEQIP, phase-II, University of Calcutta (Vide Sanction Letter No. TEQIP-II/R&D/13/105(4) dated November, 2013). The contribution of TEQIP is gratefully acknowledged. We are also grateful to the Centre for Research in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (CRNN), IIT Kharagpur and the University of Calcutta for the infrastructural support.

Conflict of interest

No benefits in any form have been or will be received from a commercial party related directly or indirectly to the subject of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, 700 009, India

    Sayari Ghosh, Arpan Roy & Debasish Sarkar

  2. Department of Physiology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, 700 009, India

    Ishita Chakraborty

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, 721302, India

    Manikuntala Mukhopadhyay & Sunando DasGupta

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  1. Sayari Ghosh
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Correspondence to Debasish Sarkar.

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Associate Editor Umberto Morbiducci oversaw the review of this article.

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Ghosh, S., Roy, A., Chakraborty, I. et al. Fractal Dimension of Erythrocyte Membranes: A Highly Useful Precursor for Rapid Morphological Assay. Ann Biomed Eng 46, 1362–1375 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-018-2050-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-018-2050-6

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