Gates

To analyze cell sub populations, you create gates and apply those gates using one of many methods. In FCS Express, plots and statistics update immediately in real time as you move gates, markers, or quadrants, allowing you to evaluate your gate placement on the go.

FCS Express supports five types of drawing gates, and another type, called combination gates, which can combine any number of other gates in several ways. You can create an unlimited numbers of gates or create a gate matrix. You can also create gates directly on images with FCS Express Image Cytometry.

Gating Types Available in FCS Express


Rectangular Gates: Gates that are in a square shape.	Elliptical Gates: Gates that are in an elliptical shape.	Polygonal Gates: Gates that are in the shape of a polygon which are defined by several vertices and straight lines connecting the vertices.

Freeform Gates: Gates that are drawn in an arbitrary shape. The gate boundaries can be curved.	1D Gates: Gates that exist only in one dimension.	Well Gating on Heat Maps: Gates that are applied to one or many wells on a heat map plot.
		Well Gating only available with high content add-on.

Creating and Using Gates

FCS Express makes it easy to create and apply any gate (ie. restrict the cells which appear on a plot to the cells that pass through a specific gate). View the short video below for examples of:

Creating a gate from the gating toolbar
Applying a gate from the gating toolbar
Dragging and dropping a gate to create a new plot
Dragging gates from the gate view to apply to a plot

Create and apply gates using the gating tools in FCS Express

Advanced Gating Types

Data Specific Gates

FCS Express allow you the ability to assign gates to specific data files that have been loaded in the data list. When a gate is converted to a Data Specific Gate for a given file, the shape and position can be modified for the specific file independently from other data files. When using the Data Specific Gate feature, the different gating positions and shapes between data files are then stored and automatically used when displaying plots or making calculations

Learn more about using Data Specific Gates.

Emphasizing Gated Populations

Hierarchical Gating

FCS Express supports hierarchical gating to create gates based on subsets of other gates. In the example below a "Cell" gate was created with subgates created for FITC and APC-Cy7 positive cells. A further hierarchy was created for those FITC Positive cells that are also APC positive.

Gating logic is flexible and may be adjusted at any time. Gates may also be created hierarchically by default by adjusting your preferences.

Flexible Gating Formulas

For more sophisticated gating, you might need to combine more than one gate into a formula.

In FCS Express, simply open a Gate View window, right-click, and select Add Combination Gate.

You will then be able to use Boolean expressions to create new gates that you can define.

FCS Express currently supports the following Boolean operators:

Operator	Definition and Example
AND	AND creates a new gate based on the intersecting events of the gates defined in the formula. For example, a combination gate defined as Gate 1 AND Gate 2 will produce a gate that shows the events that intersect both gates.
OR	OR creates a new gate by joining the events of the gates defined in the formula. For example, a combination gate defined as Gate 1 OR Gate 3 will produce a gate that shows all events contained in the defined gates.
NOT	NOT creates a new gate by removing the events of the gates defined in the formula. For example, a combination gate defined as NOT Gate 3 will produce a gate that shows all events, except the events contained in Gate 3.
XOR	XOR creates a new gate by combining the events that are exclusively within the defined gates but not intersecting with other gates in the definition. For example, a combination gate defined as Gate 1 XOR Gate 2 will produce a gate that shows all events within the defined gates, except for the events that intersect both gates.

Gates

Advanced Gating Types

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