Use of Corel Photo-Paint for chromosome karyotyping: an inexpensive, semiautomatic approach

Karyotyping has become an important component of cytogenetic analysis. Both manual and automatic karyotyping procedures are in use all over the world, but both have drawbacks. Manual karyotyping is inexpensive, but highly time-consuming and labor-intensive. Automatic karyotyping, on the other hand, saves time but is expensive and also does not always provide consistent or reliable results. Thus, in order to cope with these problems, a semiautomatic approach for karyotyping was developed. In this technique, a commonly used graphics software program, Corel Photo-Paint, is used for karyotyping. With this technique one can cut, paste, move, rotate, and arrange the chromosomes to form a karyotype. In addition, one can increase the resolution and sharpness of chromosome bands, which facilitates the classification of chromosomes. The comparative advantages of this semiautomatic approach are discussed in detail.