AUTOMATIC QUANTITATIVE-EVALUATION OF AUTORADIOGRAPHIC BAND FILMS BY COMPUTERIZED IMAGE-ANALYSIS

The present paper describes a new image processing method for automati c quantitative analysis of autoradiographic band films. It was develop ed in a specific image analysis environment (IBAS 2.0), but the algori thms and methods can be utilized elsewhere. The program is easy to use and presents some particularly useful features for evaluation of auto radiographic band films, such as the choice of whole film or single la ne background determination, the possibility of evaluating bands with film scratch artifacts and the quantification in absolute terms or rel ative to reference values. The method was tested by comparison with la ser-scanner densitometric quantifications of the same autoradiograms. The results show the full compatibility of the two methods and demonst rate the reliability and sensitivity of image analysis. The method can be used not only to evaluate autoradiographic band films, but to anal yze any type of signal bands on other materials (e.g. electrophoresis gel, chromatographic paper. etc.).