Cell Counting

Technology giving researchers the ability to quickly and precisely determine the absolute number or concentration of cells with a given phenotype is of great interest in diverse fields including clinical research and diagnostics, drug discovery, and cell biology. The recent advent of small, fully digital flow cytometers combines the advantages of hydrodynamically focused cell sampling, high data acquisition rates and excellent light scatter resolution with the ability to calculate absolute counts for any identified population in a sample.

Flow cytometry provides a rapid method to identify or classify cells, although most cytometers cannot directly provide the concentration or absolute count of cells in a sample. Concentration values are generally obtained from flow cytometric data either by combining hemacytometer counts with flow cytometric population data (dual platform counting) or by adding an internal microsphere counting standard to the flow cytometric sample (single platform counting).

The BD Accuri C6 can measure volume, and therefore allows calculation of cell concentrations within BD CFlow Plus software statistics tables without the addition of counting beads. This eliminates sources of variability associated with dual platform counting and the expense of counting beads. The pre-optimized detector performance of the BD Accuri C6 also minimizes technician-to-technician and day-to-day variability in cytometer set-up and sample analysis.

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