An applied point pattern matching problem: comparing 2D patterns of protein spots

It is shown how to use various ideas from computational geometry to derive a new algorithmic solution to the matching problem of 2D patterns of protei n spots obtained by the 2D gel electrophoresis technique. The algorithm esp ecially relies on a data structure derived from the incremental Delaunay tr iangulation of a point set and several heuristics to cope with distortions and noise inherent to the electrophoresis process. The main feature of the presented solution is that interactive landmark setting is optional and not necessary. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.