Principle component analysis (PCA)-based analysis of discontinuous emission spectra in multichromatic flow cytometry

Flow cytometric system for acquiring, storing and analyzing discontinuous emission spectra data from particles, comprising:

• a light source providing an illumination beam,
• a flow cell having a detection region in which the illumination beam illuminates the passing particles within the detection region, the particles emitting an emission spectra of fluorescent light upon illumination from the illumination beam,
• two to ten optical bandpass filters which divide the emission spectra of fluorescent light from the particles almost gaplessly into at least two and up to ten separate wavelength bands,
• light detectors which receive the divided emission spectra from the optical bandpass filters, and
• a data processor programmed to:
• process the discontinuous emission spectra data acquired from the fluorescent light emitted by the particles passed through said flow cell, and
• analyze the discontinuous emission spectra data of the at least two and up to ten separate wavelength bands divided by the optical bandpass filters via a multivariate statistic model;
• and
• wherein the optical bandpass filters are positioned between the flow cell and the light detectors.