Method and apparatus for analyzing a sample of cells

A method and an apparatus for analyzing a material within a container, such as blood within a capillary in a volumetric cytometry system provides for detecting the edges of the container, counting the cells within the container, characterizing the cells within the container, and evaluating channels of data which contain information relevant to more than one of the detectable characteristics of the cells. A scanner scans a container of material including certain cells. Sampling circuitry is coupled to the scanner to generate scanned images of the material in the container. Two or more scanned images are generated based on fluorescence data from dyes that have overlapping spectra. The two scanned images are processed using a linear regression analysis among corresponding pixels in the scanned images near certain cells to characterize relative contents of two fluorescing dyes in a target cell. Target cells are identified from the scanned images using processing resources which identify a peak sample within a neighborhood, and compare the amplitude of the peak with the amplitude of pixels on the perimeter of the neighborhood. Upon identifying a target cell in this manner, data from the plurality of scanned images corresponding to the identified cell are saved for further analysis.