WHITE BLOOD-CELL DIFFERENTIATION USING A SOLID-STATE FLOW CYTOMETER

A flow cytometer using a solid state light source and detector was des igned and built. For illumination of the sample stream two types of di ode lasers (670 nm and 780 nm) were tested in a set-up designed to dif ferentiate human leukocytes by means of light scattering. The detector is an avalanche photodiode, which was used to detect the weak scatter ed light in the orthogonal direction. The new flow cytometer set-up is very small, relatively cheap and yields similar results as a standard flow cytometer set-up using a helium-neon laser and photomultipliers. (C) 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.