Point pattern matching in the analysis of two-dimensional gel electropherograms

In the automation of proteome analysis, matching of two-dimensional (2-D) e lectropherograms represents a bottleneck in the process. Here we present a point pattern recognition approach to the matching of spots in 2-D electrop herograms. The algorithm is based on a comparison of spot neighborhoods, co nverted to point patterns between reference and compared gels. The neighbor hood was characterized by a syntactic descriptor which minimized the influe nce of spot displacements. A combined criterion utilizing the similarity of point patterns and a metric definition of position similarity was derived. The efficiency and accuracy of the algorithm was tested on a set of 69 gel s with different levels of similarity. For a typical gel the accuracy of ma tching was higher than 98% and the number of correctly identified spots was higher than 95%.