Microfluorometry analysis II. A Bayesian approach.

In flow microfluorometry (FMF) analysis cells stained with a fluorescent dye that binds specifically to DNA are passed through the instrument. The number of cells in the population having a fluorescence intensity is recorded in a single channel of a multichannel pulse height analyzer. The result is a DNA fluorescence histogram for the population.A method for decomposing an FMF histogram into its G₁, S and G₂ + M components, corresponding to similarly designated phases of the cell cycle is given. This technique can also be applied to find the parameters in all of the previous approaches. The parameters are calculated by iteration which eliminates the need for non-linear optimization procedures.