Fig. 1

CTC-iChip, developed by Ozkumur et al., capable of sorting rare CTCs from whole blood at 107 cells/s [47]. Schematic representation of three microfluidic comportments is shown. Immunomagnetically labeled whole blood and buffer are introduced into the first compartment via two input channels. In the first compartment, magnetically labeled CTCs and white blood cells are hydrodynamically sorted from the whole blood. Next, CTCs and WBCs are focused. Finally, a magnetic field (grey arrow) is applied to separate labeled CTCs and WBCs