A Microfluidic Flow Cytometer Composed of Double T-Type Constriction Channel with Predefined Fluorescence Detection Window, Enabling High-Throughput Characterization of Intrinsic Single-Cell Structural and Electrical Parameters

This paper presented a microfluidic flow cytometer composed of a double T-type constriction channel with a predefined fluorescence detection window, enabling high-throughput characterization of intrinsic single-cell structural parameters of cell diameter (Dc)/nuclear diameter (D
n
), and electrical parameters of specific membrane capacitance (Csm)/cytoplasmic conductivity (
$\sigma_{\text{cy}}$
) based on a home-developed equivalent impedance-fluorescence model. As a demonstration, D
c
, D
n
, C
sm
and
$\sigma_{\text{cy}}$
of single blood cells were quantified as
$15.18\pm 1.00$
vs.
$13.99\pm 1.91\ \mu\mathrm{m},\ 11.83\pm 1.75$
vs.
$10.59\pm 1.35\ \mu \mathrm{m},\ 2.78\pm 0.41$
vs.
$2.84\pm 0.84\ \mu\mathrm{F}/\text{cm}^{2}$
and
$0.86\pm 0.19$
vs.
$0.74\pm 0.35\ \mathrm{S}/\mathrm{m}$
for K562 (
$\mathrm{N}_{\text{cell}}=2173$
) vs. Jurkat (
$\mathrm{N}_{\text{cell}}=1326$
) cells. In comparison to hematology analyzers capable of only quantifying intrinsic biophysical parameters of D
c
, the microfluidic flow cytometer developed in this study can quantify four intrinsic parameters of D
c
, D
n
, C
sm
and
$\sigma_{\text{cy}}$
simultaneously and improve the cell-type classification from 68.7% (D
c
) to 84.0% (D
c
, D
n
, C
sm
and
$\sigma_{\text{cy}}$
).