flowCHIC - Analyze flow cytometric data of complex microbial communities based on histogram images

CHIC means cytometric histogram image comparison and is a tool for evaluation of cytometric datasets nearly automatically and very fast. CHIC neither requires gate setting procedures nor relies on quantification and binning of event distributions within histograms. The evaluation of histograms using CHIC is based on the main idea that histograms are converted into images thus working person independent and with low computational demand. Although cell specific information is given up in this way it allows, on the other hand, huge datasets to be evaluated within very short time frames. It is, therefore, a tool to visualize cell population or community dynamics and to suggest causes of dynamic variations. The sensitivity of this technique was found to discriminate down to 0.5% internal variation. On the first hand it was developed for evaluation of cytometric microbial community data but it can also be used for any other cytometric dataset.