METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SCREENING CELLS OR FORMED BODIES WITH POPULATIONS EXPRESSING SELECTED CHARACTERISTICS UTILIZING AT LEAST ONE SENSING PARAMETER

摘要

A method and apparatus (500) for automatically and rapidly, retrieving, counting and/or analyzing at least one selected population of cells or formed bodies, such as a white blood cell (WBC) population and at least one subset thereof of a whole blood sample (502) or portion thereof. A volume of a biological medium containing the WBC's is prepared and at least one reactant (506) specific or preferential at least to some selected biological cells is introduced thereto and rapidly mixed for a short period of time. A multipart blood cell analysis (512) is obtained with a single sensing parameter by depleting at least one WBC subset population. The percentage of a desired WBC population subset or the overlapping of WBC subset populations also can be obtained by subtracting one or more obscuring WBC subset populations.