BACKGROUND Two-dimensional electrophoresis (2DE) is one of the most widely applied techniques in comparative proteomics. The basic task of 2DE is to identify differential protein expression by quantitative analysis of 2DE images. To reduce the errors of spot quantification in 2DE images, a novel brightness correction method based on gradient interval histogram (GIH) is proposed in this paper. RESULTS First, GIH equalization is proposed to enhance the protein spot edges, especially the weak protein spots in the 2DE image. Second, to eliminate the overall brightness shift, GIH matching is applied to the 2DE images that need to be compared. Finally, the proposed method is verified by subjective quality evaluation and quantitative analysis of protein spots in real 2DE images. CONCLUSIONS The experimental results show that the average error of the quantification of corresponding protein spots in the resulting image pairs is less than 3%, which is significantly superior to that of the existing methods.

中文翻译：

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基于梯度间隔直方图的2D电泳图像亮度校正。

背景技术二维电泳（2DE）是比较蛋白质组学中应用最广泛的技术之一。2DE的基本任务是通过对2DE图像进行定量分析来鉴定蛋白质差异表达。为了减少2DE图像中斑点量化的误差，提出了一种基于梯度间隔直方图（GIH）的亮度校正新方法。结果首先，提出了GIH均衡以增强蛋白质斑点边缘，尤其是2DE图像中的弱蛋白质斑点。其次，为了消除整体亮度偏移，将GIH匹配应用于需要比较的2DE图像。最后，通过主观质量评估和对真实2DE图像中蛋白质斑点的定量分析，验证了该方法的有效性。