Quantitative analysis of three-dimensional morphology and membrane dynamics of red blood cells during temperature elevation

Abstract

Abstract The optimal functionality of red blood cells is closely associated with the surrounding environment. This study was undertaken to analyze the changes in membrane profile, mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH), and cell membrane fluctuations (CMF) of healthy red blood cells (RBC) at varying temperatures. The temperature was elevated from 17 °C to 41 °C within a duration of less than one hour, and the holograms were recorded by an off-axis configuration. After hologram reconstruction, we extracted single RBCs and evaluated their morphologically related features (projected surface area and sphericity coefficient), MCH, and CMF. We observed that elevating the temperature results in changes in the three-dimensional (3D) profile. Since CMF amplitude is highly correlated to the bending curvature of RBC membrane, temperature-induced shape changes can alter CMF’s map and amplitude; mainly larger fluctuations appear on dimple area at a higher temperature. Regardless of the shape changes, no alterations in MCH were seen with temperature variation.