Optical characterization of erythrocytes in health and disease

Erythrocytes are optically characterized by He-Ne laser light scattering. An experimental technique is developed to study the multiangular scattering from erythrocytes and different optical parameters are computed from the intensity distribution. The scattering pattern and the optical constants of diabetes mellitus (DM) and myocardial infarction (MI) obtained are significantly different compared to the normal samples. The variation in the optical parameters of DM and MI are due to the physical changes produced in erythrocytes because of the biochemical alterations which modify the aggregation characteristics and produce a different scattering pattern. This provides a method to characterize erythrocytes in diseases.