Feature based fuzzy matching of 2D gel electrophoresis images

Automatic alignment (matching) of two-dimensional gel electrophoresis images is of primary interest in the evolving field of proteomics. In the present study, feature-based matching techniques, in their classical and robust versions, are described, and an automatic method of fuzzy alignment (FA) is introduced. This method allows automatic matching of two gel images with different numbers of features with unknown correspondence. Performance of FA is tested on simulated and real data sets.