Microplastic particles have recently attracted much attention owing to their potential adverse effects on marine and terrestrial environments. Although several studies have been conducted on this topic, one of the prominent existing challenges is developing analytical methods to precisely characterize isolated microplastics. Specifically, a systematic method that determines both the size and shape of irregular micron-sized particles is required because conventional optical methods provide only two-dimensional images of microplastics and cannot easily handle cases of tilting or aggregation of particles. In this study, we demonstrate that previously developed microfluidic technologies can be successfully applied to measure the size and shape of oblate microparticles utilizing viscoelastic particle focusing. Furthermore, this technique is also applicable for irregular microplastic fragments that are predominantly found in environmental samples.

中文翻译：

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利用粘弹性聚焦对交叉狭缝微通道中不规则微塑料颗粒的图像细胞计数

由于对海洋和陆地环境的潜在不利影响，微塑料颗粒最近引起了广泛关注。尽管已经就此主题进行了多项研究，但现有的突出挑战之一是开发分析方法来精确表征孤立的微塑料。具体来说，需要一种系统的方法来确定不规则微米级颗粒的大小和形状，因为传统的光学方法只能提供微塑料的二维图像，并且无法轻松处理颗粒倾斜或聚集的情况。在这项研究中，我们证明了先前开发的微流体技术可以成功地应用于利用粘弹性粒子聚焦测量扁圆形微粒的大小和形状。此外，