Fig. 2: Blood-sparing and real-time measurements using the BLIPI workflow within the neonatal intensive care unit for point-of-care measurement of host immune cell response.
From: Whole blood biophysical immune profiling of newborn infants correlates with immune responses
a Highlights the significant impact of the blood volume required for individual testing for the adults (mother) compared to the infant. b Illustrates the current clinical workflow and routine testing done with a minimum of 1 mL of blood drawn in EDTA tubes for hospital laboratory tests. Results are expected within 60–120 min. The BLIPI system processes up to 0.05 mL or 50 µL of blood and measures size and deformability biophysical properties of immune cells within 15 min as shown in (c). These raw profiles are processed and fed into feature transform functions to extract useful information for downstream classification and enable measurement of host immune responses. Routine blood tests may require up to 20× more blood volume compared to biophysical profiling in the preterm infant (1 mL compared to 0.05 mL). These blood volume requirements would be compounded in situations which require multiple testing.
