Patent ID: 8253938

Claim:
An apparatus for determining multi-parameter data from particles in a sample, said apparatus comprising: (a) a source of light; (b) a flow cell containing a moving sample stream, whereby particles in the sample move with the sample stream; (c) at least one optical element for focusing light from the source of light onto the particulate material moving with the sample stream in the flow cell; (d) a scanning device for deflecting the focused light from the source of light to enable the focused light to sweep back-and-forth across the moving sample stream; and (e) at least one detector channel, said at least one detector channel including a detector, an analog-to-digital converter, and a digital signal processing module, wherein a horizontal dimension of the focused light is ten times or more greater than a width dimension of the sample stream, multiplied by a scanning frequency of the scanning device, divided by a frequency of digitization of the digital signal processing module, and wherein a vertical dimension of the focused light is three times or more greater than a velocity of the sample stream through the flow cell, divided by the scanning frequency of the scanning device.