Summary: | Summary: Investigating flowing red blood cell (RBC) morphology and orientation is important for elucidating physiology and disease; existing commercially available products are limited to observing cell populations or single cells. In this protocol, we create a custom apparatus that combines coaxial brightfield microscopy with laser diffractometry to inspect near-real-time deformability, morphology, and orientation of flowing RBCs. There are difficulties associated with building optical systems for biological inspection; however, this protocol provides a suitable framework for developing an ''ektacytoscope'' for studying blood cells.For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to McNamee et al. (2020).
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