Synchronization in the image Flow Cytometer

Abstract

The Image Flow-Cytometer permits to acquire the cell images of the lymphocytes. These images are used to count the Micro Nucleuses (MNs) induced in the cells by carcinogenic agents. The result of the count is widely used for analysis of cytogenetic damage. The acquisition is performed under the hypothesis of laminar flow of the lymphocyte. Nevertheless, many are the causes that make invalid this hypothesis and cause alterations during the image acquisition. The final effect is the presence of different alterations superimposed to the images, that misstate the algorithms used to detect the MNs. In order to reduce the number of images affected by not admissible alteration range, and to increase the reliability of the medical response, a new hardware system is pointed out to synchronize with high accuracy the image acquisition to the lymphocyte flow.