cytometry and microscopy
A glossary of optical measurements
Which optical measurements a microscope or cytometer specification should name so a later user can repeat the light path.
8 October 2026 · 7 min read
Topic cluster
Cytometry and microscopy
How flow cytometers and fluorescence microscopes generate a signal, and which controls make that signal interpretable.
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26 articles
cytometry and microscopy
Biosafety of unfixed human samples
Why unfixed human blood, tissue and cells on a cytometer or microscope stay an institutional biosafety decision, not a technique choice.
8 October 2026 · 6 min read
cytometry and microscopy
Comparing flow and imaging for the same question
How to decide whether a question needs a cytometer count or a microscope location, and what neither result is allowed to claim.
8 October 2026 · 7 min read
cytometry and microscopy
Compensation is about overlap not brightness
Why compensation subtracts spectral overlap measured from single stains, and why sliding brightness cannot repair a spillover matrix.
8 October 2026 · 7 min read
cytometry and microscopy
Confocal versus widefield in outline
What a confocal pinhole buys in optical sectioning, and what widefield keeps in speed, photons and gentler light on a thin sample.
8 October 2026 · 7 min read
cytometry and microscopy
Controls for autofluorescence
How to separate autofluorescence from a real fluorophore using matched unstained cells, the same treatment, and the right detector.
8 October 2026 · 7 min read
cytometry and microscopy
Data files FCS and image metadata
Which FCS keywords and image metadata fields to require so a cytometer run or a micrograph can be reopened and checked later.
8 October 2026 · 7 min read
cytometry and microscopy
Doublets and why they look like rare events
How pulse width and area versus height reveal doublets, and why a coincident pair can inflate a rare double-positive count.
8 October 2026 · 7 min read
cytometry and microscopy
Fixation and permeabilisation concepts
How formaldehyde fixation and detergent or alcohol permeabilisation change epitopes, and when to follow the antibody sheet.
8 October 2026 · 7 min read
cytometry and microscopy
Fluorescence microscopy without the myths
How a fluorescence microscope selects excitation and emission, and which bright pictures still fail as evidence of a labelled molecule.
8 October 2026 · 10 min read
cytometry and microscopy
Forward scatter side scatter and a gate
How to read forward and side scatter, draw a gate you can defend, and keep that gate with the file before naming a population.
8 October 2026 · 9 min read
Pillar · cytometry and microscopy
How a flow cytometer reads a cell
How a cytometer focuses cells into a laser, turns scatter and fluorescence into pulses, and why a gate is an argument rather than a fact.
8 October 2026 · 8 min read