particle scanning
Traditional flow cytometers analyze thousands of cells per second acquiring basic total
fluorescence and light scattering per cell. This is proportional to particle size and pigment
content. What if the separation of the clusters is insufficient to discriminate between
species and/or if additional shape information of the particles is required?
In the CytoSense instruments the signals from all the detectors are not only digitized
continuously, they are also stored for each particle. Since the particles flow through the
laser focus in a stretched-out manner these digital profiles are actually length scans of
the particle, representing the distribution of its 'bodyparts' along its length axis with
regard to the their light scattering and fluorescing properties. This fluid driven laser
scanning of individual particles is called silico-imaging and uses the normal flow
cytometer setup combined with special data grabber boards. The optional 'curvature'
sensor adds a two-dimensional component to the silico-images using a laser beam
polarization setup only available on CytoSense flow cytometers.
Advantages of silico-imaging or scanning is the high acquisition rate of up to 1000 scans
per second through a USB interface, and the suitability of the data format for standard flow
cytometer data analysis and fast processing of large data files. Libraries of these
fingerprints allow the automatic classification and enumeration of groups and species from
many data sets as well as online warning for target (HAB) species. Our software
application CytoClus is designed for user interactive cluster analysis basing on user
selectable parameterizing of these particle scans.
some example scans:
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