(Go back one page to three-color compensation,
or back to the introduction)
As we cram more and more colors on each laser, which are closer and closer
together, we have to compensate between every pair of channels. Furthermore,
we are starting to use fluorophores which can be excited by multiple lasers,
which generates the need for cross-laser compensation. (For instance, Cy5PE
can be efficiently excited not only by the 488 nm Argon laser line, but
also a 633 nm HeNe laser line--and emit very similarly to APC. APC, however,
is not excited by the 488 nm line. Therefore, we can compensate from the
first laser Cy5PE channel to the APC channel to remove the contribution
of Cy5PE fluorescence on the second laser, leaving only APC fluorescence).
Multi-color compensation is a simple extension of two-color compensation,
through the use of linear algebra. Let's assume that we are measuring n
different fluorescent molecules, all of which may contribute fluorescence
to each of the other channels. Therefore, the measured signal in any channel
is given by:
M(1) = A(11) x F(1) + A(21) x F(2) + ... A(n1) x F(n)where M(i) is the measured fluorescence in channel i; F(i) is the amount of fluorescent molecule (i) present on the cell of interest, and A(ij) is the ratio of the fluorescence of molecule (i) in channel (i) to the fluorescence of molecule (i) in channel (j).
M(2) = A(12) x F(1) + A(22) x F(2) + ... A(n2) x F(n)
...
M(n) = A(1n) x F(1) + A(2n) x F(2) + ... A(nn) x F(n)
M = A x FIf we premultiply both sides by the inverse of the coefficent matrix (A'), then we have:
A' x M = A' x A x F = FComputationally, therefore, we invert the coefficient matrix A, multiply by the measured values M, and the result F gives the concentration of each fluorescent molecule present in the measured cell. F is the completely compensated set of signals. Note that the coefficients in the matrix A' contains the compensation values.