Abstract

The project's main goal is to develop a userfriendly analysis environment to perform a quantitative analysis of the chemical procedure called electrophoresis.

The electrophoresis is an electrochemical procedure to analyze DNA segments, which depend on the different intensities and their locations spread over the gel matrix, these DNA accumulations called bands.

The diploma project "Automated Genetic Analyzer" uses a 10-bit camera system with a significantly higher gray scale gradiation than the human eye.

With powerful image processing algorithms of the MATLAB® Image Processing Toolbox can process the acquired and analyzed data reliably and efficiently.

The complete electrochemical procedure, that the analysis is based on, has been fully carried out in the school's laboratory to test the various project components.

The chemical process is visualized by the transillumination of UV radiation, a specially designed piece of hardware is used to align the camera system and also protect the laboratory technicians from UV radiation.

An variably designed user interface provides an analysis environment that adapts to the requirements of modern laboratories.

A quantitative analysis of the image data in terms of base pairs and the nanograms of DNA contained in the sample, creates a significant increase in efficiency in terms of time resulting in a declining susceptibility to errors and accuracy of the analysis.

This results in a hardware and software combination that does not yet exist. The new way enables the analysis efficiency of this method.

The diploma project will be an integral part oft the teaching in the course of biochemical laboratory exercises in the next few years and espacially for understanding the structure and the importance of DNA as the most important component of our life visually.