Past Research |
Digital Flow Cytometric Classification of Biological Cells
Students: Mahesh Godavarti, Nick A. Zilmer, Sundararajan Sankaranarayanan, Shiva Murthi,
Bo Xia
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Flow cytometry makes use of reflected laser light to analyze and classify
biological cells.The laser light strikes the cell, is reflected, and sensed by a photomultiplier
tube, resulting in a 1-D signature profile of the cell. We developed a digital
signal processing system that augments the commercial, analog flow cytometer.
The 1-D analog signal is digitized, and waveform features are digitallycomputed.
A prototype of a second-generation digital data acquisition
system (DDAPS-2), a mixed-signal design operating at 40 MHz, was built to
interface to a commercial flow cytometer. The DDAPS-2 intercepts the analog
signal from the photomultiplier tube and preamp, performs analog-to-digital
conversion, extracts various features and then feeds these extracted
features into one of the several pattern classification algorithms.
The novelty of the DDAPS-2 is the use of dual-buffering FIFO memories to acquire digital samples of the pulse
voltage signal.
Through experimental results using a variety of cell types, we
demonstrated that the digital system provides improved performance compared to
the analog system since a much richer set of features can be used to
discriminate cell populations. Experimental results also demonstrated the improvement in the
pulse capture performance of DDAPS-2 over DDAPS-1, which used a single-buffering FIFO memory.
This work was a collaborative effort with Prof. David W. Galbraith in the Dept. of Plant Sciences.
Publications:
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Mahesh Godavarti and Jeffrey J. Rodriguez, "An Improved
Technique for Automated Image Histogram Thresholding," in
Proc. 8th Intl. Conf. on Signal Processing Applications \&
Technology, San Diego, CA, Sept. 14-17, 1997, pp. 1165-1170.
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Mahesh Godavarti, Jeffrey J. Rodriguez, Timothy A. Yopp, Georgina
M. Lambert, and David W. Galbraith, "Automated Particle
Classification Based on
Digital Acquisition and Analysis of Flow Cytometric Pulse
Waveforms," Cytometry, vol. 24, no. 4, 1996, pp. 330-339. [ PDF ]
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Mahesh Godavarti, Jeffrey J. Rodriguez, Timothy A. Yopp,
Georgina M. Lambert, and
David W. Galbraith, "Neural Network Analysis of Digital Flow
Cytometric Data," in Proc. IEEE Intl. Conf. on Neural
Networks, vol. 5, Perth, Australia, Nov. 27 - Dec. 1, 1995, pp.
2211-2216. [ PDF ]
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