Interphoton burst recurrence times: Single cell analysis in freely flowing solutions

The authors present a simple and direct analysis method for the discrimination between different cell populations in fluidic media. The methodology is based on analysis of single particle interphoton burst recurrence times and has potential use in high precision single cell sizing and counting applications. The approach requires registration of only a few hundred photons from single fluorescent particles to distinguish between different molecular populations. The technique is simple to implement and can be designed to extract information in real time within microfluidic environments.