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AssigneeCoulter International Corp.
InventorsWilliam E. Kirouac, Eric Statler, J. David Starling
Estimating the term…
A flow cytometer sorting mechanism is operative to controllably sort successively generated fluid droplets in accordance with the contents of a plurality of contiguous precursor regions of the carrier fluid which are contained within a target droplet of interest and precursor regions for droplets on either side of the target droplet. This multi-region sorting window scheme is particularly useful in reducing the time required to harvest a highly purified quantity of a particular type of cell, as not only are droplets containing only desired cells sorted to a highly purified collection store, but should an undesired cell be detected within a predefined proximity of a desired cell, rather than being simply aborted, the droplet is sorted into an auxiliary enrichment container, whose contents may then be reclaimed for resorting. Since all droplets are sorted to one of a plurality of droplet reclamation containers, substantially no detected/target cells are lost. As a result, through dual collection and resorting of the contents of the enrichment container the total harvest time can be significantly reduced.
A flow cytometer comprising a channel, through which a carrier fluid stream containing at least a prescribed component and potentially components other than said prescribed component flows, and which is intercepted by an optical energy beam illumination and detector subsystem, said subsystem being operative to generate output signals representative of contents of successive ones of contiguous droplet precursor regions as illuminated by said optical energy beam, said fluid stream containing a sequence of contiguous droplet precursor regions, that will eventually become, but are not yet formed into, droplets that are separated from said fluid stream by a downstream droplet generator to which said channel is coupled, and a droplet sorter through which said respective droplet pass, said droplet sorter being operative to sort said respective droplet to one of a plurality of droplet collection paths in response to an output signal generated by said subsystem being representative of the presence of said prescribed component in a selected number of droplet precursor regions within first, second and third pluralities of contiguous droplet precursor regions, and in accordance with contents of contiguous droplet precursor regions of said first, second and third pluralities of contiguous droplet precursor regions, other than said selected number of contiguous droplet precursor regions, said first, second and third pluralities of contiguous droplet precursor regions corresponding to respective first, second and third droplets that are separated from said fluid stream.
A method of sorting a respective droplet from a fluid stream containing a sequence of contiguous droplet precursor regions, that will eventually become, but are not yet formed into, droplets that separate from said fluid stream, said method comprising the steps of:
A method of sorting a respective droplet from a fluid stream containing a sequence of contiguous droplet precursor regions, that will eventually become, but are not yet formed into, droplets that separate from said fluid stream, so as to accumulate a quantity of a prescribed component that may be present in said fluid stream, said method comprising the steps of:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.