Optical particle analyzing apparatus having two types of light sources

Claim 1

An optical particle analyzing apparatus for classifying and enumerating particles, comprising: a flow cell; means for passing particles such as cells stained with a fluorescent stain through said flow cell in the form of a fine particle stream; means for irradiating an irradiating zone in the fine stream of particles in said flow cell with two types of light; means for detecting respective ones of scattered light and fluorescence produced by the particles in the irradiating zone; means for processing and analyzing signals outputted by said detecting means, wherein said two kinds of light which irradiate the irradiating zone are a laser light beam emitted by a laser light source and a lamp light beam, which has a wavelength shorter than that of the laser light beam, emitted by a lamp light source, the laser light beam and lamp light beam intersect each other at the irradiating zone to irradiate the same, and the irradiating laser light beam is narrowed to a beam narrower than the lamp light beam in a direction in which the particles flow; and a signal processor for signal-processing a scattered-light signal which results from the laser light beam and is detected in the irradiating zone, and a fluorescence signal which results from the lamp light beam and is detected in the irradiating zone, wherein when the fluorescence signal is signal-processed by said signal processor, the scattered-light signal is used as a timing signal for this signal processing.