Reconstruction of serum protein electrophoresis densitometry profiles by gel image analysis
Abstract
Our department is currently engaged in development of a mobile application to make gel images of results of serum protein electrophoresis (SPE) and immunofixation (IFE) available for viewing by ordering physicians. Our overall objective with the mobile application is to promote additional education on SPE among physicians, fellows, residents and medical students.
In the course of the project, we also considered whether SPE densitometry profiles should be included, for comparison to canonical SPE patterns of disease (e.g., acute inflammation, chronic inflammation, etc.). However, whereas gel images (Sebia Hydrasys II system) can be uploaded automatically to a central server for use with a mobile viewer application, densitometry data for individual SPE lanes must be transferred manually.
Our objective was to determine whether densitometry data for individual lanes of SPE gels could be reconstructed by gel image analysis alone, so as to obviate the need to transfer lane-by-lane densitometry data files.
