DNA sequencing using optical joint Fourier transform

Abstract

An optical image processing technique is proposed for analyzing and exploring DNA sequences. The proposed approach uses the powerful computing capability of optical correlation to provide real-time processing of the genomic data. Instead of representing the symbolic DNA sequences in numeric form, they are converted and treated as 2-D images for matching purposes. Both images of the reference and the target DNA sequences are combined and presented as a joint input image to an optical joint transform correlator (JTC) set-up for a real-time processing. This JTC-based approach is capable to search for similarity/dissimilarity between two tested DNA sequences. The proposed optical approach facilitates the exhaustive search algorithms for locally and/or globally DNA alignment. Simulations experimental results on actual DNA sequences are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed optical approach.