流式细胞术is a biophysical technology that simultaneously measures and then analyzesmultiple physical characteristicsof up to thousands of cells per second, as they flow in a fluid stream exposed to a beam of light. In order to do so, a flow cytometer is made up of three main systems:fluidics,optics, and电子产品.

流式细胞术has many applications in life sciences, such as cell counting, cell sorting, biomarker detection, and protein engineering. In the recent years, all flow cytometers are able to sort cells and, therefore, when researchers use it for that purpose the technique is also calledFluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS).