Technique for cellular fluorescence distribution analysis

Abstract
The usefulness of multidimensional slit‐scan flow cytometry in whole cell measurements is dependent on extracting relevant features from the cellular fluorescence distributions (slit‐scan contours). In addition, the extraction of these features must be rapid to allow for realtime data processing during acquisition. This paper describes two algorithms that have been used successfully to count the numbers of local maxima (peaks) and to find nuclear boundaries in a cellular fluorescence distribution. These routines are efficient, use only simple integer arithmetic, and have been implemented on several different microprocessors.