Patent · US Expired

System and method for automatically identifying sub-grids in a microarray

US6839454B1 · kind B1 · utility

28Cited by
9References
54Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateOct 12, 1999
Grant dateJan 4, 2005
Priority date
Expiry dateOct 12, 2019

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06V2201/04
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A digital image processing-based system and method for quantitatively processing a plurality of nucleic acid species expressed in a microarray are disclosed. The microarray is a grid of a plurality of sub-grids of the nucleic acid species. The system includes a scanner that has a digital scanning sensor that scans the microarray and transmits from an output a digital image of the microarray, and a computer that receives the digital image of the microarray from the scanner and then processes the digital image, identifying each of the microarray's sub-grids. The computer identifies the position of each of the sub-grids by (a) identifying regions in the digital image that each contains one of the sub-grids, (b) identifying rows and columns in each region where nucleic acid species are expressed to form a set of candidate sub-grids in each region, (c) selecting for each region a probable sub-grid from the set of candidate sub-grids in each region, and (d) comparing the positions of the probable sub-grids from each region to finalize the sub-grid positions.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.