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In situ flow cytometer calibration and single-molecule resolution via quantum measurement
Published
Author(s)
Ivan Burenkov, Sergey Polyakov, Juan J. Sabines Chesterking
Abstract
Fluorescent biomarkers are used to detect target molecules within inhomogeneous populations of cells. When these biomarkers are found in trace amounts it becomes extremely challenging to detect their presence in a flow cytometer. Here, we present a framework to draw a detection baseline for single emitters and enable absolute calibration of a flow cytometer based on quantum measurements. We use single-photon detection and find the second-order autocorrelation function of fluorescent light. We compute the success rate for rare event detection for different signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). We show high accuracy identification of the events with occurrence rates below 10^-5 even at modest SNR levels, enabling early disease diagnostics and post-disease monitoring.
Burenkov, I.
, Polyakov, S.
and Sabines Chesterking, J.
(2022),
In situ flow cytometer calibration and single-molecule resolution via quantum measurement, sensors mdpi, [online], https://doi.org/10.3390/s22031136.
(Accessed October 8, 2025)