Patent ID: 8417012

Claim:
A method for determining a population of particles contained in a biological sample, comprising: (a) passing particles from the biological sample through a measuring region of a particle analyzer; (b) interrogating each particle passing through the measuring region with respect to at least two parameters; (c) detecting the at least two parameters with one or more detectors; (d) storing the detected at least two parameters as data; (e) selecting first data stored for a first parameter and a second data stored for a second parameter; (f) creating an initial two-dimensional histogram using the selected data for the first and second parameters, wherein a first dimension of the two-dimensional histogram corresponds to the first parameter and a second dimension of the two-dimensional histogram corresponds to the second parameter; (g) filtering the initial two-dimensional histogram to generate a filtered two-dimensional image; (h) detecting a plurality of seed populations in the filtered two-dimensional image; (i) determining one or more anchor points and generating one or more linear contour lines to separate the detected seed populations, the contour lines running though the one or more anchor points, each contour line having a plurality of contour points; and (j) adjusting the contour points in at least one of the linear contour lines to separate the detected seed populations.