If your data are off the plot, bunched on an axis or piled on the edge of the plot, or otherwise don't look correct, the scales for the Cytobank Experiment may need to be adjusted.
Scale settings can be customized by using the the scale editor in any Cytobank Experiment:
There are only one version of scales in a Cytobank experiment at any given time. If the scales within an experiment are changed, then all saved illustrations that depend on those scales will also change. Note that gates are fixed to the scale settings they were drawn on, so gates will still capture the same events before and after any scale change.
To change any value within a field within the scale editor, simply click on it. When done editing the field, press the "return" key on your keyboard or click outside of the field to finalize your changes.
Cytobank offers three ways / equations to scale your data:
- Linear (raw data values unchanged from sample)
- Log (data are transformed by base 10 logarithm)
- Arcsinh (learn more)
Cytobank will automatically set scale equation for most channels to arcsinh for data produced by most modern cytometers. Older cytometers that produce data without negative values may be viewed in Log. Some data may be set to linear scale mode by default, which in many cases will need to be adjusted in the scale editor to a different scale equation. We generally recommend arcinsh.
For further reading on the optimal setting of scales, check out our blog post on how to scale cytometry data effectively.