Scattering techniques to detect and record various human cell types

Light-scattering techniques represent an appealing approach to the flow-system analysis and sorting of mammalian cells because they do not require fixation and staining, procedures that kill the cells and can introduce artifacts. A flow-system instrument has been developed1,2 at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in which the intensity of light scattered by a cell as it passes through a focused laser beam is measured simultaneously at up to 32 angles between 0° and 21° with respect to the laser beam, and the scatter pattern is transferred to a computer for analysis.