Method and apparatus for correcting lens non-uniformities in an

Abstract

A method and apparatus for correcting non-uniformities in the lens assembly of an electrophoresis apparatus is provided. Assuming a detector with a uniform responsivity as well as a uniform illumination source, correcting for lens non-uniformities allows accurate quantitative measurements of an electrophoresis gel to be made, thus increasing the information which can be obtained from an electrophoretic analysis. Applying the system, the non-uniformities due to the lens assembly are first characterized for a range of aperture and magnification settings. A look-up table is then created which contains the non-uniformities and/or correction data files for the lens assembly according to the aperture and magnification settings. In order to correct a sample image, the aperture and magnification settings used to obtain the sample image are provided to the system processor. These settings may be automatically obtained by the processor or manually input by the user. After the processor receives the lens settings, it applies the look-up table to determine the corresponding lens non-uniformities as well as the necessary correction file. The sample image is then normalized by dividing the sample image file by the appropriate correction file. Once normalized, the corrected sample image file may either be displayed or stored for later use.