Method and system for processing an image comprising spots in nucleic acid sequencing

1. A method for processing an image, comprising:

an image pre-processing step, comprising: simplifying a to-be-processed image so as to produce a first image, wherein the to-be-processed image comprises at least one spot having at least one pixel point; and

a spot detecting step, comprising:

analyzing the first image so as to compute a spot determining threshold;

analyzing the first image so as to acquire a candidate spot; and

judging whether the candidate spot meets the spot determining threshold, comprising:

searching in the first image for a pixel point with connectivity greater than (p*p−1) as a center of the candidate spot;

judging whether the center of the candidate spot satisfies a condition of I max *A BI *ceof guass >T, where I max is a maximum intensity of a center of the p*p window, A BI is a proportion of pixels in the first image being a set value in the p*p window, ceof guass is a correlation coefficient between a pixel in the p*p window and a two-dimensional Gaussian distribution, and T is the spot determining threshold, where p is an odd number greater than 1; and

determining a spot corresponding to the center of the candidate spot as the spot when the condition is satisfied; or

discarding the spot corresponding to the center of the candidate spot when the condition fails to be satisfied.

2. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the image pre-processing step comprises performing a background subtraction on the to-be-processed image.

3. A method according to claim 2 , wherein the simplifying the to-be-processed image is after the background subtraction.

4. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the image pre-processing step comprises filtering the to-be-processed image.

5. A method according to claim 2 , wherein the image pre-processing step comprises filtering the to-be-processed image after the background subtraction.

6. A method according to claim 5 , wherein the simplifying the to-be-processed image is after the background subtraction and the filtering.

7. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the spot detecting step comprises:

computing a sub-pixel center coordinate of the spot and/or an intensity value of the sub-pixel center coordinate, when it is judged that the candidate spot is the spot; and

discarding the candidate spot, when it is judged that the candidate spot is not the spot.

8. A method according to claim 2 , wherein performing a background subtraction on the to-be-processed image comprises:

determining a background of the to-be-processed image by an opening operation; and

performing the background subtraction on the to-be-processed image according to the background.

9. A method according to claim 4 , wherein the filtering is a Mexican Hat filtering.

10. A method according to claim 9 , wherein performing the Mexican Hat filtering comprises:

performing a Gaussian filtering on the to-be-processed image using an m*m window, where m is an odd number greater than 1; and

performing a two-dimensional Laplacian sharpening on the to-be-processed image after the Gaussian filtering.

11. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the simplifying is a binary processing.

12. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the simplifying comprises acquiring a signal-to-noise ratio matrix according to the to-be-processed image before the simplifying, and simplifying the to-be-processed image before the simplifying according to the signal-to-noise ratio matrix so as to acquire the first image.

13. A method according to claim 1 , wherein analyzing the first image so as to compute a spot determining threshold comprises:

processing the first image by an Otsu method so as to compute the spot determining threshold.

14. A method according to claim 7 , wherein computing a sub-pixel center coordinate of the spot and/or an intensity value of the sub-pixel center coordinate comprises:

computing the sub-pixel center coordinate of the spot by a quadratic function interpolation, and/or computing the intensity value of the sub-pixel center coordinate by a quadratic spline interpolation.

15. A method according to claim 7 , further comprising:

indicating by an identifier a location of the sub-pixel center coordinate of the spot in the first image and/or in the to-be-processed image.

16. A computer readable memory medium, configured to store a program that when executed by a computer causes the computer to perform the method for processing the image in gene sequencing according to claim 1 .

17. A system for processing an image, comprising:

a processor;

memory configured to store a computer executable program that, when executed b the processor, perform operations comprising:

analyze a to-be-processed image so as to obtain a first image, the analyzing the to-be-processed image comprising simplifying the to-be-processed image so as to acquire the first image, wherein the to-be-processed image comprises at least one spot having at least one pixel point;

analyze the first image so as to compute a spot determining threshold;

analyze the first image so as to acquire a candidate spot;

judge whether the candidate spot is the spot according to the spot determining threshold;

search in the first image for a pixel point with connectivity greater than (p*p−1) as a center of the candidate spot; and

judge whether the center of the candidate spot satisfies a condition of I max *A BI *ceof guass >T, where I max is a maximum intensity of a center of a p*p window, A BI is a proportion of pixels in the first image being a set value in the p*p window; ceof guass is a correlation coefficient between a pixel in the p*p window and a two-dimensional Gaussian distribution, and T is the spot determining threshold, where p is an odd number greater than 1; and

determine a spot corresponding to the center of the candidate spot as the spot when the condition is satisfied; or

discard the spot corresponding to the center of the candidate spot when the condition fails to be satisfied.

18. An image processing system, comprising:

memory configured to store data comprising a computer executable program; and

a processor, configured to perform the computer executable program, which performs the method for processing an image in gene sequencing according to claim 1 .

19. The system according to claim 17 , wherein the analyzing the to-be-processed image further comprises performing a background subtraction on the to-be-processed image before simplifying the to-be-processed image.

20. The system according to claim 19 , wherein the analyzing the to-be-processed image further comprises filtering the to-be-processed image after the background subtraction and the simplifying the to-be-processed image being after the filtering.