COULTER XL DATA CAPTURE

Biagini, Raymond E. (reb4@NIOBBS1.EM.CDC.GOV)
Wed, 03 May 95 16:26:00 EST

We are a government lab using a Coulter XL with MCL. Although not used
everyday, sometimes daily workloads approach 500-600 2- and 3-color tubes
per day for basic phenotyping of samples from 60-90 subjects. Our problem
is in getting the data from the XL into a spreadsheet.

Some Background (some of which is not related to the problem at hand):

1. The XL only accounts for 95% of CD45bright/CD14dim cells in its
backgating paradigm leading to "normal" lymphosums in the 88-94% range.

2. There is sporadic carryover from some tubes and/or brain lock during the
automatic setting of isotype gates leading to gates which are inappropiate
for the rest of tubes in a panel which use that control.

3. Because of #2, one can't "trust" the XL's database files which are
easily, although somewhat clumsily, imported into EXCEL or LOTUS.

4. Because of #3, the only way to be sure that your not getting "virtual
data" is to replay the listmode files (which would take a lifetime) or
replay the saved histogram files (.HSTs) in Coulter's Multigraph program,
set the isotype gates by hand (vitrually-human reality) and print the data.
This is most easily done done by copying all the HST files to a giant
RAMDISK (12-16 Meg), which makes things move along pretty snappily, even on
a DX486-66 (I'm awaiting a Pentium 100Mhz would should increase the
snappiness) . This gives you the corrected data in hardcopy form, which has
to be manually entered into a spreadsheet program (with the potential for
all kinds of human error.

My Question is:

Does anyone know of a way to capture the output of the Multigraph program in
such a way to import it into a spreadsheet. I've tried all common methods
(print to file programs, HiJaak, etc.) with no sucess as I think the
multigraph program is using non-standard PCL commands to print to the
printer (I've also tried switching to other printer types with no sucess).

ANY HELP WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.

Ray Biagini
Research Toxicologist
CDC/NIOSH
Taft Laboratories
4676 Columbia Parkway
Cincinnati, OH 45226
Phone: 513-533-8196
FAX: 513-533-8400
EMAIL: REB4@NIOBBS1.EM.CDC.GOV


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