Finite Elements Analysis of Two Microwave Sensors for Red Blood Cells Monitoring During Storage

The accepted biophysical marker for the aging of Red Blood Cells (RBC) during storage is their deformability, described by the average of cell's elongation ratio (ER). Previously, we measured this parameter concurrently with the dielectric spectrum in γ-dispersion (0.5 to 70 GHz), represented by the Cole-Cole parameters. The relaxation time, τ, is anticorrelated with ER variations, indicating a dramatic shift in blood viability. Besides, we observe a monotonous change in the α parameter starting after the first week of storage. Furthermore, Δε also changes during the whole period. These results lead to an intriguing hypothesis about the dielectric parameters' behavior and the RBC's demise. Towards the development of a well-established method for monitoring stored RBC employing γ-dispersion spectroscopy, longer-lasting clinical trials need to be carried out over a large cohort of samples. We propose easy-to-use and low-cost systems for monitoring the γ-dispersion of cell suspensions. The systems extract the complex dielectric permittivity on at least two frequencies; those values allow the whole Cole-Cole relaxation model calculation.