Fully Automatic Analysis of DNA Microarray Images

Abstract
During the last years, the advent and rapid development of DNA microarray techniques has revolutionized genetic research in life sciences. We are presenting a new stand-alone software for fully automated analysis of microarray images. It employs a number of novel image processing algorithms for grid detection and spot segmentation which assure high calculation speed and accuracy.

The software can be run using a self-explanatory graphical user interface (GUI) or from the command line which gives additional flexibility and allows integration into larger microarray analysis frameworks. Batches of images as well as single images can be processed.

The main benefits of this software over existing ones are its extremely easy handling (no user interaction required), the fast and robust gridding, the flexible free form spot segmentation and its multiple usage scenarios. We present examples of the performance of the proposed algorithms on real-world microarray images with heavy noise and artefacts.