The Athena semi-automated karyotyping system

*Faculty of Applied Physics, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. ^Laboratory for Cell Analysis, University of California San Francisco, USA

In this article we describe a system we have constructed that provides for automated karyotyping of metaphase spreads. The software system Athena Ð based upon the Macintosh II platform is written entirely in C and consists of approximately 200 Kbytes of executable code. While Athena does not provide (at this time) facilities for automated metaphase finding, it does provide facilities for automated image segmentation into individual chromosomes, automated measurements on each banded chromosome, and automated classification into the standard Paris-convention karyotype. Further, the system provides the ability to construct one or more chromosome data bases to represent the types of metaphase spreads and staining techniques that may be used in a given laboratory.

Centromere finding using shortest distance

Because we believe that it is impossible to construct a system that can achieve perfect segmentation, perfect separation of touching and overlapping chromosomes, perfect localization of the centromeres, and perfect classification, the system offers the possibility for interaction at each of the above stages using the well-accepted Macintosh user interface.

e-mail: young@ph.tn.tudelft.nl

Last update: 8 February 1995