Gating

This page introduces you to the concept of gating and which gating strategies apply depending on your BactoBox® use case.

BactoBox® counts and classifies individual particles in your sample vial. Gating creates two categories: other and cells. Together, other and cells give total. On the Results screen (see Dash), you see cells/mL and total/mL.

We do not show other/mL on the Results screen. You find other/mL in summary.csv (see summary.csv).

Gating determines the category names

The category names (e.g., cells and total) follow the gating. In some gating settings, the category names are intact cells, custom cells, and total particles.

Gating in flow cytometry

BactoBox® is an impedance flow cytometer. All flow cytometers use gating to classify (categorize) the individual objects in the sample.

The impedance part means that BactoBox® uses electricity to probe each object. This happens in real time as several thousand objects in the sample pass through the flow cell.

The electrical properties of a cell are unique. BactoBox® builds its gating around those properties. We call this gating BacTotal-10.

BactoBox® counts individual objects (bacteria and blue dots) in your sample vial. BactoBox® classifies some objects as cells (everything in the green rectangle) based on your applied gating. Conceptually, the gating is like the green rectangle in this diagram. Note that, like in real life, the gating is not perfect. A couple of the blue dots (particles) are inside the green rectangle (counted as cells). Likewise, a couple of bacteria are outside the green rectangle (counted as other).

Gating settings in BactoBox®

• BacTotal-10 (recommended and the BactoBox® default)

• Custom gating

• Legacy gating settings

The gating setting used for each measurement is always displayed on the 'Results' screen and recorded in the summary.csv file for reference.

CRS file

We store gating settings in a CRS file. For each of the rows in the table above, there is a corresponding CRS file.

Use the Gating page in Access to see all CRS files on your BactoBox®.