Velocity measurement of both red blood cells and plasma of in vitro blood flow using high-speed micro PIV technique

This paper describes a new high-speed micro PIV technique for measuring both red blood cell velocity and plasma velocity to investigate rheology of blood flow in microcirculation. The measurement system consists of an epi-fluorescent microscope equipped with a high-speed camera with an image intensifier and two sets of colour filters. The technique was applied to in vitro blood flow through a micro round tube of 100 mu m diameter. Velocity distributions of dyed red blood cells and plasma seeded with fluorescent particles were obtained separately. The obtained velocity distributions have a high spatial resolution of 9.0 mu m x 2.2 mu m and high temporal resolution of 6000 Hz.