Image processing applied to the analysis of electrophoresis gels

In order to extract the protein spots in a gel image from the uneven background which has sharp edges, e.g., lines and streaks in some area, the authors have developed a detection algorithm where the median or FIR median hybrid (FMH) filter is taken as the smoother to estimate the varying background. A performance comparison shows that FMH detectors provide a simple implementation as well as a good compromise between streak removing and spot distortion. Spot matching approaches, including structural matching and statistical matching are also discussed