• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.38-45
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• 2016

Separation of particles based on different sizes, detection of pathogenic bacteria and isolation of leukocytes from whole blood are typical applications of spiral or helical microchannels. The present study focuses on developing a CD4+ T-cell counting device for monitoring HIV/AIDS patients with the aid of a helical minichannel used for a sample cartridge. For the experiment, $10{\mu}m$ sized microbeads were used for visualization with a fluorescence imaging system. Alignment of microbeads was investigated in a stationary and spinning sample cartridge filled with glycerol-water mixtures of different densities. The helical minichannel was spun using a DC motor controlled by an Arduino board with a Bluetooth shield. It was found that when the sample cartridge was made stationary, no bead alignment was achieved for a medium with density (0% and 20% glycerol) lower than that of the beads, but when it was spun at 2000-3000 rpm for 1-4 min, an alignment was obtained at the top of the channel facilitating optical detection and enumeration of those microbeads. Since an alignment of microbeads was achieved for a medium with density as that of blood plasma, the same approach can be applied for aligning and counting CD4+ T-lymphocytes in whole blood samples collected from patients.