On the possibility of laser ektacytometry measurement of the kurtosis for erythrocyte deformability distribution

The problem of measuring red blood cell deformability by laser diffractometry in shear flow (ektacytometry) is considered. An algorithm has been developed for measuring the four central parameters of the erythrocyte deformability distribution, i.e. mean value, variance, asymmetry coefficient and kurtosis. The algorithm is designed to work with the peripheral part of the diffraction pattern and serves to analyse weakly inhomogeneous ensembles of red blood cells. (paper)