The gas embolism is a well-known phenomenon. Previous studies
have been performed to understand the formation, the behavior and the influence
of air bubbles in microcirculation. This study aims to investigate the flow of
bubbles in a microchannel network with bifurcations. For that purpose, a
microchannel network was fabricated by soft lithography. The working fluids
used were composed by sheep red blood cells (RBCs) suspended in dextran 40
and two different hematocrits were studied, 5% and 10%. The in vitro blood
flow was analyzed for a flow rate of lO ~-tllmin, by using an inverted microscope
and a high-speed camera. It was possible to visualize the formation of the
bubbles and their behavior along the network. The results show that the passage
of air bubbles influences the cells local concentration, since a higher concentration
of cells was seen upstream to the bubble and lower concentrations
downstream to the bubble.
This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
(FCT), Portugal, under the strategic grants UID/EMS/04077/2019, UID/EEA/04436/2019 and
UID/EMS/00532/2019. The authors are also grateful for the partial funding of FCT through the
projects POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016861 (ref: PTDC/QEQ-FIT/4287/2014), NORTE-01-0145-
FEDER-029394, NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-030171, funded by COMPETE2020, NOR1E2020,
PORTUGAL2020, and FEDER. D. Bento acknowledges the PhD scholarship SFRH/BD/911921
2012 granted by FCT.
