Morphometric effects of particulate air pollution on an optically trapped single red blood cell

Particulate air pollution is associated with excess deaths and increases in hospital admissions because of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Several scientific studies and assessments have linked particulate pollution to a variety of health problems. In this paper, we provide a single cell in vitro analysis for the effect of the particles, which can enter into blood stream, on red blood cells (RBCs). The RBCs under experiment are incubated with Fe₃O₄ particle as the most abundant air pollutants in big cities. The self-referencing digital holographic microscopy (DHM) in Gates’ arrangement as a vibration-immune methodology is considered here for live visualization and quantitative analysis of the cells. DHM is a label-free and noninvasive method, therefore, suitable for quantitative and morphometric imaging of biological specimens in arbitrary time scales and at video rates. Single RBCs are immobilized by a blinking multiple optical trapping system integrated to the DHM system. Through post-process numerical reconstruction of the recorded digital holograms, the morphology changes of the pollution-exposed RBCs are tracked and expressed in terms of volume and several statistical morphometry parameters.