thumb|right|blood film in a patient with [[hereditary elliptocytosis: approximately 60% to 70% of the RBCs are elliptocytes.]] thumb|Elliptocyte compared to other forms of poikilocytosis.
thumb|right|blood film in a patient with [[hereditary elliptocytosis: approximately 60% to 70% of the RBCs are elliptocytes.]] thumb|Elliptocyte compared to other forms of poikilocytosis.
Elliptocytes, also known as ovalocytes or cigar cells, are abnormally shaped red blood cells that appear oval or elongated, from slightly egg-shaped to rod or pencil forms. They have normal central pallor with the hemoglobin appearing concentrated at the ends of the elongated cells when viewed through a light microscope. The ends of the cells are blunt and not sharp like sickle cells.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).