A system and method are described for rendering a characteristic for a set of particles passing through a measurement volume of a particle optical measurement system. The method includes acquiring raw particle data for the particles passing through the measurement volume. The raw particle data comprises a set of raw particle records. Each particle record comprises at least: a trajectory of at least one particle, and a second primary mark of the at least one particle whose value influences an effective sampling area corresponding to the measurement volume. The method includes generating and storing an effective sampling area based upon: the trajectory of the at least one particle, and the second primary mark. Thereafter, an ensemble characteristic is rendered for the set of particles by performing an operation on the sampling area-corrected set of particle records.