The Quantitative Microscopy Laboratory (QML) in the Department of Bioengineering is devoted to the development of fully automated quantitative microscopy, or scanning cytometry, for biomedical research and applications. Development of a scanning cytometry system capable of accurate, exhaustive analyses of the 100,000 - 10,000,000 cells on a single microscope slide at high optical resolution requires four main components. These components, which comprise the primary instrumentation research areas, include high performance autofocus, real-time image segmentation, image fluorometry, and cell classification. Quantifying the measurement accuracy and/or precision of these steps in the scanning cytometry process are also significant aspects of this research. Current and proposed biomedical research areas include cervical (Pap smear) cancer screening, rare event detection (e.g., locating fetal cells in maternal circulation for genotyping), sorting by laser ablation, cell cycle kinetics, and chemotherapy drug testing using time-lapse scanning cytometry of living cells cultured on the microscope stage.