System and method for automatically processing microarrays
First Claim
1. A system for evaluating a signal characterizing output of a process of assessing chemical materials manifested as an irregular array of signals, the array being a grid of sub-grids of the chemical materials, said system comprising:
- a memory storing generated digital data relating to performance of the process; and
a processor for accessing the digital data from said memory and for determining therefrom a level of confidence in the signal characterizing output of the process.
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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 processor 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 processor then detects in each of the sub-grids a center-representing pixel of a signal of a chemical material and an approximate radius of the signal. Then, the processor segments the signal and calculates a characterizing measure for the segmented signal.
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Citations
76 Claims
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1. A system for evaluating a signal characterizing output of a process of assessing chemical materials manifested as an irregular array of signals, the array being a grid of sub-grids of the chemical materials, said system comprising:
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a memory storing generated digital data relating to performance of the process; and
a processor for accessing the digital data from said memory and for determining therefrom a level of confidence in the signal characterizing output of the process. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 70, 73)
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19. A method of evaluating a signal characterizing output of a process of assessing chemical materials manifested as an irregular array of signals, the array being a grid of sub-grids of the chemical materials, said method comprising the steps of:
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a. generating digital data characterizing a performance aspect of the process; and
b. determining from the digital data a level of confidence in the signal characterizing output of the process. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 71, 74)
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37. A computer readable medium having stored therein one or more sequences of instructions for evaluating a signal characterizing output of a process of assessing chemical materials manifested as an irregular array of signals, the array being a grid of sub-grids of the chemical materials, said one or more sequences of instructions causing one or more processors to perform a plurality of acts, said acts comprising:
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a. generating digital data characterizing a performance aspect of the process; and
b. determining from the digital data a level of confidence in the signal characterizing output of the process. - View Dependent Claims (38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72, 75)
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76. A system for assessing chemical material samples arranged as a grid, the system comprising:
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a memory for storing a digital image of the grid, where the digital image derived from a signal received from the chemical material samples, and is comprised of pixels; and
a processor for accessing the digital image from said memory, identifying characteristics of the grid from the image, detecting a pixel representing the center of a signal received from a chemical material sample and an approximate radius of the signal received from the chemical material sample, segmenting the signal, and calculating a characterizing measure for the segmented signal.
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Specification