Improved signal extraction from fluorescence immunoassay image sequences

Abstract

A recently developed dynamic fluorescence immunoassay for the biomarker Myoglobin promises to provide detection of myocardial infarction within minutes. Signal extraction for this method is based on epifluorescence video microscopy, but is confounded by inhomogeneous spatial gain, intensity inhomogeneity or IIH. We present here a novel adaptive correction method which estimates the IIH from a video image sequence. This estimated IIH may be used to correct the image signal extraction process. The enhancement to detection limits and consistency of estimated concentrations are quantified, based on an improvement to SNR of approximately 9 dB.