The ultimate goal of the project, which includes researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of California, Berkeley; and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is to develop new information processing technologies that will enable researchers to extract detailed information from images that depict the distribution of biological molecules within cells.
Central to the Carnegie Mellon research component is the first-ever software framework for automatically analyzing high-resolution digital images from fluorescence microscopes. Developed by Murphy, the software is able to discriminate patterns within cells that cannot be distinguished by the human eye.
"Over the past 10 years, the increased availability of sophisticated light microscope imaging systems has led to an explosion in the acquisition of digital images by scientists," said Murphy, professor of biological sciences and biomedical engineering, and a member of the Center for Automated Learning and Discovery (CALD) in the School of Computer Science.
Inundated with such large amounts of data, scientists have recognized that automated approaches to categorizing and comparing these images are urgently needed. Murphy's work will pave the way to fully automate the extraction of information from fluorescent images and to construct statistically sound models of the biological processes the images depict.
Understanding the location and function of
'"/>
Contact: Lauren Ward
wardle@andrew.cmu.edu
412-268-7761
Carnegie Mellon University
20-Oct-2003