Division of Biomedical Engineering

The generation of high quality plasma from whole blood is of major interest for many biomedical analyses and clinical diagnostic methods. The paper (Lenshof, 2009) present an acoustophoretic device prepares diagnostic plasma from undiluted whole blood, using a sequential removal of acoustically packed and enriched red blood cells. By using multiple outlets along the bottom of the separation channel, where concentrated cell fractions could be diverted from the main flow without affecting the influence of the cell focusing radiation force, blood was processed until there is basically only cell free plasma left in the channel. Our current results show that 12.5% clean plasma by volume could be extracted from whole blood. The obtained plasma contained less than 6.0 × 10⁹ erythrocytes per liter which is in line with the quality specifications for blood transfusion stated by the Council of Europe.