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This paper describes a new high-speed micro PIV technique for measuring both red blood cell velocity and plasma velocity to investigate rheology of blood flow in microcirculation. The measurement system consists of an epi-fluorescent microscope equipped with a high-speed camera with an image intensifier and two sets of colour filters. The technique was applied to in vitro blood flow through a micro round tube of 100 µm diameter. Velocity distributions of dyed red blood cells and plasma seeded with fluorescent particles were obtained separately. The obtained velocity distributions have a high spatial resolution of 9.0 µm × 2.2 µm and high temporal resolution of 6000 Hz.

Biophysical behavior of blood in the vasculature is of importance in microcirculation researches. Especially, rheological properties of blood flow have been studied using in vivo and in vitro experiments. This paper describes flow characteristics of in vitro blood flow. In order to obtain velocity distributions with high spatial resolution, a micro PIV technique, which consists of a fluorescent microscope, double-pulsed YAG laser and cooled CCD camera, was applied to in vitro blood flow experiment through a micro round tube of a diameter 100 μm. Velocity distributions with spatial resolutions of 5.9 x 0.73 μm were obtained even near the wall region. The results showed typical characteristics of Non-Newtonian fluid that the axial velocity profiles of blood flow were blunt around the center region of a tube.