Study of non-linear viscoelastic behavior of the human red blood cell

TL;DR

This study investigates the non-linear viscoelastic properties of human red blood cells under shear stress, using experimental data and advanced filtering and analysis techniques to identify non-linear dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis pipeline combining filtering, Fourier transform, and recurrence analysis to characterize RBC viscoelastic behavior.

Findings

Identification of non-linear quadratic terms in the Kelvin-Voigt model

Consistent dynamics across healthy donor samples

Presence of dominant frequency peaks in RBC response

Abstract

The non-linear behavior of human erythrocytes subjected to shear stress was analyzed using data series from the Erythrocyte Rheometer and a theoretical model was developed. Linear behavior was eliminated by means of a slot filter and a sixth order Savisky-Golay filter was applied to the resulting time series that allows the elimination of any possible white noise in the data. A fast Fourier transform was performed on the processed data, which resulted in a series of frequency dominant peaks. Results suggest the presence of a non-linear quadratic term in the Kelvin-Voigt phenomenological model. The correlation dimension studied through recurrence quantification analysis gave C2=2.58. Results suggest that the underlying dynamics is the same in each RBC sample corresponding to healthy donors.