초록 ▼

Gene expression can be quantitatively analyzed by hybridizing fluor-tagged mRNA to targets on a cDNA micro-array. Comparison of gene expression levels arising from co-hybridized samples is achieved by taking ratios of average expression levels for individual genes. In an image-processing phase, a me

Gene expression can be quantitatively analyzed by hybridizing fluor-tagged mRNA to targets on a cDNA micro-array. Comparison of gene expression levels arising from co-hybridized samples is achieved by taking ratios of average expression levels for individual genes. In an image-processing phase, a method of image segmentation identifies cDNA target sites in a cDNA micro-array image. The resulting cDNA target sites are analyzed based on a hypothesis test and confidence interval to quantify the significance of observed differences in expression ratios. In particular, the probability density of the ratio and the maximum-likelihood estimator for the distribution are derived, and an iterative procedure for signal calibration is developed.

대표청구항 ▼

[ We claim:] [1.]1. A method for analyzing gene expression in a cDNA micro-array image, the method comprising:identifying target sites in the cDNA micro-array image, wherein the target sites are associated with a set of genes;computing a maximum-likelihood estimator for a coefficient of variation of

[ We claim:] [1.]1. A method for analyzing gene expression in a cDNA micro-array image, the method comprising:identifying target sites in the cDNA micro-array image, wherein the target sites are associated with a set of genes;computing a maximum-likelihood estimator for a coefficient of variation of expression level ratio samples, where the expression level ratio samples are taken from a collection of expression values for each gene in the set of genes associated with the target sites identified in the micro-array image, the expression level ratio samples indicate a ratio of an expression level for a first cell type to an expression level for a second cell type for a corresponding gene, and the expression levels for the corresponding gene are taken from a target site associated with the corresponding gene in the cDNA micro-array image;computing a confidence interval for the expression level ratio samples based on the maximum likelihood estimator for a coefficient of variation of expression level ratio samples; andidentifying genes corresponding to expression level ratio samples outside the confidence interval.