Patent ID: 7835000

Claim:
A particle interrogation system, comprising: a laser source for generating a light beam; a fluidics apparatus configured to transport a particle in a sample stream at substantially low velocity through said light beam, wherein said fluidics apparatus focuses the particle in a flow chamber; said flow chamber being coupled to a slow flow delivery system configured to transport the particle through said light beam with said substantially low velocity in a range of 10 cm/s to 1 cm/s wherein said light beam is configured to impinge upon said particle transported in said flow chamber at said substantially low velocity, and wherein the transit time of said particle through said light beam is about 100 microseconds or more; at least one detector configured to detect optical signals resulting from said light beam impinging on said particle; and signal conditioning circuitry, operably coupled to the at least one detector, configured to condition output signals from the at least one detector into electronic signals for processing thereof, said signal conditioning circuitry comprising low pass filter circuitry to filter high frequency noise from said detected optical signals.