Measurements of blood viscosity using a pressure-scanning slit viscometer

A newly designed pressure-scanning slit viscometer is developed to combine an optical device without refraction while measuring blood viscosity over a range of shear rates. The capillary tube in a previously designed capillary viscometer was replaced with a transparent slit, which is affordable to mount optical measurement of flowing blood cells. Using a pressure transducer, we measured the change of pressure in a collecting chamber with respect to the time, p(t), from which the viscosity and shear rate were mathematically calculated. For water, standard oil and whole blood, excellent agreement was found between the results from the pressure-scanning slit viscometer and those from a commercially available rotating viscometer. This new viscometer overcomes the drawbacks of the previously designed capillary viscometer in the measuring whole blood viscosity. First, the pressure-scanning slit viscometer can combine an optical instrument such as a microscope. Second, this design is low cost and simple (i.e., ease of operation, no moving parts, and disposable).