METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DETERMINING THE HEMATOCRIT OF A BLOOD SAMPLE UTILIZING THE INTRINSIC PIGMENTATION OF HEMOGLOBIN CONTAINED WITHIN THE RED BLOOD CELLS

摘要

A method for determining the hematocrit of a blood sample is provided thatincludes the steps of : 1) depositingthe sample into an analysis chamber (10) adapted to quiescently hold thesample for analysis, the chamber defined by the interiorsurfaces (14, 18) of first and second panels (12, 16) and a height (20)extending there between, wherein both panels aretranspar-ent, and the height is such that at least some of the red blood cells(22) within the sample contact both interior surfaces of thepan-els and one or more lacunae (24) within the quiescent sample extendbetween the interior surfaces; 2) imaging at least a portion ofthe quiescent sample, which sample portion contains the red blood cells andone or more lacunae to determine an optical densityof the imaged portion of the sample on a per image unit basis; 3) selectingand averaging the optical density values of the imageunits aligned with the red blood cells contacting the interior surfaces, andassigning an upper boundary value of 100% to theaver-age optical density value of those image units; 4) selecting the opticaldensity values of the image units aligned with the one ormore lacunae, and assigning a lower boundary value of 0% to the opticaldensity values of those image units; and 5) determiningthe hematocrit of the sample by assigning relative values to the opticaldensity value of each image of the imaged sample portionas a function of the upper and lower boundary values, and averaging therelative values.