APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR VOLUMETRIC CAPILLARY CYTOMETRY

摘要

The apparatus and method of the present invention disclose a scanning imaging cytometer wherein an unprocessed biological fluid sample is reacted with a fluorescently-labeled binding agent. The reacted sample undergoes minimal processing before it is placed into a capillary tube. The sample is optically scanned and fluorescence excitation is recorded from a plurality of columnar regions of the capillary tube, each columnar region generally defined by the spot size of the excitation beam and the depth dimension of the capillary tube. A spatial filter of a sufficient pinhole diameter is selected to allow simultaneous volumetric detection of all fluorescent targets in each columnar region.