Patent ID: 8721964

Claim:
An animal blood cell measuring apparatus comprising: a specimen preparation section for preparing a measurement specimen from blood of an animal and a stain solution; a characteristic information obtaining section which comprises a light source for emitting light to the measurement specimen, receives fluorescence and scattered light that occur when the light emitted from the light source illuminates the measurement specimen, and obtains fluorescence intensity information that corresponds to intensity of the received fluorescence and scattered light intensity information that corresponds to intensity of the received scattered light; and a controller configured for performing operations comprising: (a) classifying aggregate reticulocytes contained in the blood from other blood cells, based on the fluorescence intensity information and the scattered light intensity information obtained by the characteristic information obtaining section; and (b) outputting information regarding a number of the classified aggregate reticulocytes, wherein the operation (a) comprises: demarcating a red-blood-cell type coordinate area containing red blood cells and reticulocytes, in a two-dimensional coordinate having a coordinate axis representing the fluorescence intensity and a coordinate axis representing the scattered light intensity; obtaining a frequency distribution, with respect to the fluorescence intensity of blood cells within the red-blood-cell type coordinate area; obtaining fluorescence intensity X that corresponds to a peak of the frequency distribution and a variance σ of the frequency distribution from the frequency distribution; performing calculation of Thr=X+σ·α based on the obtained fluorescence intensity X, the obtained variance σ, and a coefficient α that is applied to measurement of the aggregate reticulocytes of the animal, thereby calculating a threshold value Thr of the fluorescence intensity; and demarcating an aggregate-type coordinate area that includes the aggregate reticulocytes, in the red-blood-cell type coordinate area by using the Thr of the fluorescence intensity.