New Registration Method for Two-Dimensional Gel Electrophoresis Images

Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2DGE) images are extremely useful support for proteins analysis in the field of proteomics. The registration of 2DGE images is an important element for protein identification in biological research while it is a complex and difficult problem. This paper proposes a new non-linear registration approach for 2DGE images, which is based on the exploitation of both spot distance measure and spot intensity. The method consists of three steps: multi-resolution affine registration, spot pairing, and thin-plate spline interpolation. The results on both simulated and real gel images show that the proposed method significantly improves registration accuracy in comparison with traditional registration techniques and has promising use in practical gel image analysis systems in proteomics.