Photometric evaluation of slab gels II: Delimitation and integration of peaks in one‐dimensional electropherograms

In order to increase accuracy and precision of quantifying one‐dimensional electropherograms by digital signal processing, a set of algorithms is presented that operate on the optical density values acquired by a linear scanning densitometer. These operations include smoothing of the measuring values, background correction by an optimized piecewise linear baseline, and integration of the peak areas after two‐sided fit of half‐Gaussian profiles to each stained protein band. The algorithms are implemented as BASIC‐programs and are readily adaptable to a variety of electrophoretic separations. The procedure has been applied successfully in research [1] as well as in clinical evaluations [2].