Segmentation of the Comet Assay Images

The single cell gel electrophoresis, called Comet Assay, is a microelectrophoretic technique of direct visualization of the DNA damage at the cell level. In the comet assay, the cells suspended in an agarose gel on a microscope slide are subjected to lysis, unwinding of DNA and electrophoresis. Under the influence of weak, static electric field, charged DNA migrates away from the nucleus, forming the so called comet. The damage is quantified by measuring the amount of the genetic material, which migrates from the nucleus to form the comet tail. In this paper we present three novel methods of the comet tail and head extraction, which allow to quantify the cell’s damage.

[1]  P. Olive,et al.  The comet assay: a comprehensive review. , 1995, Mutation research.

[2]  Konrad W. Wojciechowski,et al.  Contrast Enhancement of Badly Illuminated Images Based on Gibbs Distribution and Random Walk Model , 1997, CAIP.

[3]  W Böcker,et al.  Comet assay studies of radiation-induced DNA damage and repair in various tumour cell lines. , 1994, International journal of radiation biology.

[4]  Akshay K. Singh,et al.  Deformable models in medical image analysis , 1996, Proceedings of the Workshop on Mathematical Methods in Biomedical Image Analysis.

[5]  P. Olive,et al.  DNA damage and repair in individual cells: applications of the comet assay in radiobiology. , 1999, International journal of radiation biology.

[6]  R R Tice,et al.  DNA damage and repair with age in individual human lymphocytes. , 1990, Mutation research.

[7]  A. Collins,et al.  Application of the comet assay for monitoring DNA damage in workers exposed to chronic low-dose irradiation. I. Strand breakage. , 1998, Mutation research.

[8]  R. Tice,et al.  A simple technique for quantitation of low levels of DNA damage in individual cells. , 1988, Experimental cell research.

[9]  Rod Stephens.  Ready-to-run Delphi 3.0 algorithms , 1998 .

[10]  Konrad W. Wojciechowski,et al.  A New Method of Texture Binarization , 1997, CAIP.

[11]  J. Hoeijmakers,et al.  DNA repair mechanisms. , 2001, Maturitas.

[12]  Demetri Terzopoulos,et al.  Snakes: Active contour models , 2004, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[13]  Helga Stopper,et al.  Radiation-Induced Comet-Formation in Human Skin Fibroblasts from Radiotherapy Patients with Different Normal Tissue Reactions , 1999, Strahlentherapie und Onkologie.

[14]  B. Rydberg,et al.  ESTIMATION OF DNA STRAND BREAKS IN SINGLE MAMMALIAN CELLS , 1978 .

[15]  Jerry L. Prince,et al.  Snakes, shapes, and gradient vector flow , 1998, IEEE Trans. Image Process..

[16]  K J Johanson,et al.  Microelectrophoretic study of radiation-induced DNA damages in individual mammalian cells. , 1984, Biochemical and biophysical research communications.

[17]  Konrad W. Wojciechowski,et al.  Random walk approach to image enhancement , 2001, Signal Process..

[18]  R R Tice,et al.  Abundant alkali-sensitive sites in DNA of human and mouse sperm. , 1989, Experimental cell research.

[19]  Guillermo Sapiro,et al.  Geodesic Active Contours , 1995, International Journal of Computer Vision.