To see Non-Rectangular Quadrants in action, view our video on Quadrants.

FCS Express supports three different kinds of quadrants: standard quads, non-rectangular quads called floating quadrants, and percentile quadrants.

• Standard quadrants are the traditional type of quadrants: a crosshairs which divides the plot into 4 rectangular sections. To change the size of the quadrants, you click on and move the center vertex.
• Floating quadrants provide a flexible way to adjust your analysis to the contours of your data. With floating quadrants, all vertices (the center and one on each side wall of the plot) are moved independently. Therefore, you are no longer confined to rectangular shapes. Using floating quadrants you can create the shape seen in the plot below.
• Percentile quadrants allow you to automatically determine where the quads should be, based on your data.  You decide the percentile along the x and or y axes where you want the center vertex to be, and FCS Express will take care of the rest. 
  

Full statistical analysis can be performed on all types of quadrants.

Applying standard quadrant to the plot above would be make it impossible to graphically isolate, and calculate the percentage of, each cell population denoted by the different colors.

However, in this situation using floating quadrants makes the impossible, possible.