Analysis of DNA distributions from flow cytometry. Validation of an automatic procedure against simulated data.

A recently proposed automatic procedure for analyzing DNA distribution from flow cytometric data is extensively tested against simulated data. After a discussion of the procedure itself and of the simulation program, the results obtained are reported. They are evidence of the reliability of the procedure in extracting the proper underlying DNA distribution from sets of data obtained under various simulated instances. The different sources of error are then analyzed, along with their quantitative effects on the fit of the fluorescence histogram.