Dynamic analysis of the silver staining gel image of 2-DE for protein spots segmentation

A novel image analysis method combined with recently developed powerful computing hardware is proposed, in which the time course for the image data of silver staining gel taken during the developmental process was used for the analysis of protein spots in two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The alignment procedure of the time course gel images using the landmark spots of plastic fragments was a critical step in the precise analysis of protein spots. The merged, or adjacent, protein spots that inhibit the quantification and identification of the proteins were successfully segmented from regions that were automatically determined from the previous time gel image, which effectively removed operator subjectivity. Furthermore, the effect of termination time of the developing process on the gel image analysis was not a concern, because the present analysis used the whole-time course of the gel image.