Patent ID: 8241238

Claim:
A cell sorting apparatus comprising: an extracorporeal circulation system for sampling blood from a subject, circulating the blood outside a body and returning the blood into the body; cell measuring means for supplying measurement light to cells contained in the blood sampled by the extracorporeal circulation system to optically measure cell information on the physical quantity relating to the volume of the cell itself or a nucleus of the cell, such that the cell measuring means irradiates a predetermined region of the blood containing the cell with the measurement light, acquires phase difference information by detecting light passing through the cell, and sets the phase difference information as the cell information; cell separating means for separating, based on the cell information measured by the cell measuring means and a sorting condition set for sorting a specific type of cell, cells which satisfy the sorting condition to perform a first cell sorting, and returning the other cells into the body via the extracorporeal circulation system; image acquiring means for acquiring an image of the cell separated by the cell separating means that satisfied the sorting condition; and image analyzing means for extracting image data of a specific type of cell from the image acquired by the image acquiring means to perform a second cell sorting.