Biological investigation using scanning probe recognition microscopy

Direct investigation of, and interaction with, biological objects at the macromolecular level will provide insight into multiple physical regulatory processes. Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques have the potential to provide a direct interaction with living specimens at the macromolecular scale. In the present research we will discuss the site-specific recognition techniques that are appropriate for biological objects of different shapes in the SPM images. Moment-based shape features which are scale and translation invariant are successfully used to distinguish tubular objects from globular objects. Among the globular objects, white blood cells can be clearly classified from red blood cells by applying two-dimensional continuous wavelet transform (CWT), which can represent information of objects in multiple scales. The scan plan for site-specific investigation can then be determined by employing multi-scale edge detection techniques on the result.