Identification of biomarkers in defocussed images

Frédéric Stauber

Semester Project

Section of Life Sciences and Technologies, EPFL

July 2012

Abstract

Biocartis is a Swiss company that develops novel diagnostic technology platforms for multiplexed biomarker detection. The detection technology is based on encoded micro-particles (Figure 1), which are bio-functionalized and arrayed in microchannels. Image analysis is used to localize and identify the micro-particles. In this project, two algorithm using a parametric approach have been designed and implemented. The first one is intended to work on simple synthetic images (Figure 2). It showed high capability in both localization and decoding the microparticles on these images in a joint and sophisticated manner. The second algorithm was designed to deal with bigger and more complex real images. The major difference with the first algorithm is that it uses a less sophisticated but faster two-step approach. This algorithm both demonstrated to be efficient from a computation point of view and outperformed the current algorithm of Biocartis in terms of localization/decoding.