Spectral characteristics of human leukocytes and their relevance to automated cell identification. III. Eosinophils, neutrophils and lymphocytes.

The spectral characteristics of various normal cell types from human blood were examined in respect to an automated, rapid-flow photometric identification system after staining for peroxidase activity. It was found that a plot of light loss against light scatter gave a separation of eosinophils, neutrophils and lymphocytes comparable in accuracy to visual separations. This staining was not useful for the segregation of monocytes and basophils, for which other stains have proven useful in the sytsem under study. It is concluded that automated, rapid-flow photometric identification of blood cell types can produce differential cell counts with good confidence levels.