Robust cDNA microarray image processing on a hand-held device

Genetic Microarray Image Processing has become an important field of research to produce tools aiming to reliable gene expression estimation. Current instrumentation to analyze microarray images lacks flexibility, portability and accuracy. In the present paper an FPGA-based hand-held device for the analysis of microarrays is described, which may implement basic scanning and reticle algorithms to estimate spots and expression levels in cDNA microarrays. The algorithms are based on global and local spot correlation, background removal and rectangular mask fitting. These algorithms can be recursively applied and are intrinsically parallelizable for practical implementation purposes. Results using specific microarray images are shown.