Removal of malaria-infected red blood cells using magnetic cell separators: A computational study

High gradient magnetic field separators have been widely used in a variety of biological applications. Recently, the use of magnetic separators to remove malaria-infected red blood cells (pRBCs) from blood circulation in patients with severe malaria has been proposed in a dialysis-like treatment. The capture efficiency of this process depends on many interrelated design variables and constraints such as magnetic pole array pitch, chamber height, and flow rate. In this paper, we model the malaria-infected RBCs (pRBCs) as paramagnetic particles suspended in a Newtonian fluid. Trajectories of the infected cells are numerically calculated inside a micro-channel exposed to a periodic magnetic field gradient. First-order stiff ordinary differential equations (ODEs) governing the trajectory of particles under periodic magnetic fields due to an array of wires are solved numerically using the 1st to 5th order adaptive step Runge-Kutta solver. The numerical experiments show that in order to achieve a capture efficiency of 99% for the pRBCs it is required to have a longer length than 80 mm; this implies that in principle, using optimization techniques the length could be adjusted, i.e., shortened to achieve 99% capture efficiency of the pRBCs.     

Numerical solutions of the generalized Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation using B-spline functions

A numerical technique based on the finite difference and collocation methods is presented for the solution of generalized Kuramoto-Sivashinsky (GKS) equation. The derivative matrices between any two families of B-spline functions are presented and are utilized to reduce the solution of GKS equation to the solution of linear algebraic equations. Numerical simulations for five test examples have been demonstrated to validate the technique proposed in the current paper. It is found that the simulating results are in good agreement with the exact solutions.