Modelling and quality assessment of spots in digital images — With application to DNA microarrays

Based on a recently developed spot segmentation method, we here present a new approach to modelling of individual spots in digital images, e.g. images of DNA microarrays. From the model parameter estimates and residuals we have developed an expedient approach to automatic quality assessment and identification of corrupted spots. The suggested approach to quality control is shown to give a statistically significant decrease of the variance in gene expression log-ratio estimates for three different DNA microarray datasets.