EVALUATION OF AUTOFOCUS FUNCTIONS IN MOLECULAR CYTOGENETIC ANALYSIS

This work describes a systematic evaluation of several autofocus funct ions used for analytical fluorescent image cytometry studies of counte rstained nuclei. Focusing is the first step in the automatic fluoresce nce in situ hybridization analysis of cells. Thirteen functions have b een evaluated using qualitative and quantitative procedures, For the l ast of these procedures a figure-of-merit (FOM) is defined and propose d. This new FOM takes into account five important features of the focu sing function. Our results show that functions based on correlation me asures have the best performance for this type of image.