Flow cytometry is most often used to analyze white blood cells; the red blood cells are removed by lysis.
Some appropriate sample types are:
- Peripheral blood (anticoagulated)
- Bone marrow (anticoagulated)
- Lymph nodes and other tissues
- Fluids (e.g., cerebrospinal fluid, peritoneal, pleural, etc.)
- Manually disaggregated tissue biopsy specimens
Since size and granularity measurements help sort cell populations in flow cytometry, it is imperative to keep the cells intact. Thus, flow cytometry is best conducted on viable cells. Dead cells can complicate result interpretation by:
- Non-specifically binding monoclonal antibodies and emitting false fluorescent signals.
- Falling in inappropriate portions of the light scatter graph and falsely elevating event/cell counts.
