In flow cytometry, hydrodynamic focusing prevents which artifact?

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Multiple Choice

In flow cytometry, hydrodynamic focusing prevents which artifact?

Hydrodynamic focusing uses sheath fluid to squeeze the sample stream so cells pass through the interrogation point in a single-file line. This ensures that each laser pulse interacts with one cell at a time, preventing multiple cells from being detected together. When coincidence occurs, signals from two or more cells blend, leading to misleading scatter and fluorescence and distorted data. By keeping a single cell in the laser beam, the flow cytometer obtains clean, interpretable measurements for each event. Temperature fluctuations and hemolysis arise from environmental or sample-handling factors, not from the streaming geometry, and platelet clumping is a sample quality issue rather than an artifact prevented by focusing.

Hydrodynamic focusing uses sheath fluid to squeeze the sample stream so cells pass through the interrogation point in a single-file line. This ensures that each laser pulse interacts with one cell at a time, preventing multiple cells from being detected together. When coincidence occurs, signals from two or more cells blend, leading to misleading scatter and fluorescence and distorted data. By keeping a single cell in the laser beam, the flow cytometer obtains clean, interpretable measurements for each event. Temperature fluctuations and hemolysis arise from environmental or sample-handling factors, not from the streaming geometry, and platelet clumping is a sample quality issue rather than an artifact prevented by focusing.

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