Exporting Sample Data

When you have a population selected in the Workspace, you can choose to export the data for that population in the form of a new FCS file, or as a list of Comma Separated Values (CSV.) This allows you to create a new FCS file containing only the data you want to include. Alternatively, you can create a text file that can be imported into a spreadsheet program. This spreadsheet file will contain the raw data from the sample (the event data), containing only the parameters you wish to export and can have either the channel numbers or the converted absolute intensities.

The exported FCS files can then be read in by any other application that can read FCS files. You can also open it in FlowJo. This is useful if you are working with very large data files and only need to examine a small subset of the events: exporting them to a separate file and reading that in makes the program operate much more efficiently.

Choosing File > Export/Concatenate brings up the dialog below.

This dialog allows you to export a subset of the parameters of the file or files if you wish. Uncheck any parameters you do not want in the exported file.

Select between CSV and FCS from the Output Format drop-down list. Select a location to write the new file with the Output File button. The Event Count of the currently selected file(s) is shown. You can choose to export a representative subset of the total by specifying a smaller number in the Event Count box.

Finally, choose whether to export the data using either the scaled fluorescence values, or the raw channel numbers. The former are the relative fluorescence intensities for each cell, taking into account logarithmic amplification or linear gain settings.

Exporting Histogram Data and Kinetics Data

You can also copy/paste gated histogram data or processed kinetics data from the Kinetics Platform to a spreadsheet. At left is the Edit menu in the Kinetics Window. Copying the picture will put a bitmap version of the graph on the clipboard. Copying statistics will place the contents of the statistics table on the clipboard. You can paste into a spreadsheet or word processor. Copy Time Series places comma separated value pairs on the clipboard, each pair is time in seconds with the corresponding value of the selected parameter. See Kinetics.

At right is the Edit menu in the Graph Window. You can select Copy Histogram as Text. This is the events per channel data that is displayed in a histogram graph. You might wish to do this so that you can perform specialized analyses, such as DNA analysis (cell-cycle fitting), etc. When you paste into a spreadsheet, two columns will be created. The first one has the channel numbers for the histogram (at whatever resolution the data was collected); the second has the event counts for each channel. This is the raw, unsmoothed data. If a gate was applied to view the graph, then the exported data will reflect only the gated events.

Copy Picture and Copy Picture with Gates record bitmap information to the clipboard. Copy Gate sends the XML description of the gate to the clipboard. You can paste the gate back into the same or another graph.