A fast spot segmentation algorithm for two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis analysis

An important issue in the automation of two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis image analysis is the detection and quantification of protein spots. A spot segmentation algorithm must detect, define the extent of, and measure the integrated density of spots under a wide variety of actual gel image conditions. Besides these functions, the algorithm must be memory efficient to be able to process very large gel images and do this in a reasonable amount of computation time on low‐cost computers, such as workstations and personal computers. We have developed a fast spot segmentation algorithm, extending the GELLAB‐II segmenter, which extracts spots in a single raster scanning pass through the gel image. The performance analysis of the algorithm will be given in the paper as well as a discussion of the algorithm.