A new filter for spot extraction in n-dimensional biological imaging

In confocal cellular imaging, fluorescent markers are used to label target structures. These elements of interest frequently appear as spots within a noisy background. Several algorithms have been proposed to extract spots in such conditions. However, specific methods are required when other structures are also labelled. In this paper, a new spot extraction filter is proposed to discriminate between spots and other structures using the shape of the local spatial intensity distribution. Preliminary results in the analysis of the intra-cellular distribution of the KORRIGAN1 protein in plant cells are presented. Very low detection error rates are reported.