Fluorescent-Activated Cell Sorting (Flow Cytometry)

Flow cytometry is a widely used diagnostic tool in many laboratories, which generates information that is essential for the diagnosis and classification of different hematolymphoid neoplasms (Reichard KK, KS, Flow cytometry in the assessment of hematologic disorders. In: Orazi A, Foucar K, Knowles DM et al (eds) Neoplastic hematopathology. Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, MD, pp 119-145, 2013). Flow cytometry allows us to identify individual cells within heterogeneous populations. It is also useful for the quantification of cells, such as CD4 counts in HIV patients and CD34 stem cells on bone marrow and peripheral blood specimens. Lastly, it can also be used to describe the pattern of antigen expression on cells known as immunophenotyped (Craig FE, Foon KA, Blood 111(8):3941-3967, 2008).