Technique for cellular fluorescence distribution analysis

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 real-time 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.