Quantitative Scanning Condition Effects on Atomic Force Microscopy Measurements of Human Red Blood Cells

The present study provides a quantitative analysis of sixteen geometric parameters obtained by scanning red blood cells of a healthy adult human using atomic force microscopy. All the data were statistically compared in order to test the influence of direction-sense, resolution (64 × 64, 128 × 128, 256 × 256, and 512 × 512 pixels), and scan rate (0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 Hz) on the measurements. Although there was no influence of the direction-sense on measurements, the study concludes that only seven parameters were not influenced by a 4-fold variation of resolution and scan rate. Despite of nine parameters were influenced, they can be easily compensated by the application of correction constants based on first degree equations aiming comparison data purposes. In summary, we were able to determine the influence of several scanning conditions on measured data that is a fundamental optimization for further high-throughput biomedical applications, such as diagnostic and prognostic of diseases and infections.