Segmentation of microarray cDNA spots using MRF-based method

Abstract

Segmentation or separation of spots from the background in cDNA microarray images is one of the earlier steps in gene expression data analysis. Performance of the segmentation method may profoundly impact the performance of the subsequent stages of data extraction and analysis. Several methods have already been suggested to segment microarray spots. In this study, we propose a new approach based on the Markov random field modeling of the microarray spot regions. Initial parameters were estimated using an entropy-based thresholding algorithm. The proposed method was applied to actual microarray images, and our preliminary results indicate that the proposed segmentation method performed well.