Title: Using fractal dimension as discriminator of infected HeLa cells from spectrophotometric images

Authors: Radu Dobrescu, Loretta Ichim

Addresses: Department of Automatic and Industrial Informatics, Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers, Politehnica University of Bucharest, 313 Splaiul Independentei, Romania. ' Department of Automatic and Industrial Informatics, Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers, Politehnica University of Bucharest, 313 Splaiul Independentei, Romania; Department of Bioinformatics and Hardware, 'Stefan S. Nicolau' Institute of Virology, Romanian Academy, 285 Mihai Bravu, Bucharest, Romania.

Abstract: The paper presents an original experimental optical method to characterise, using fractal dimension, cell nuclei size distribution for virus-infected and non infected cells. Here is described the solution to design an optical system, which allow backscattering Mie diffusion spectra determination for biological sample on transparent holder. Fractal dimension as interest area of Mie scattering spectra was computed using a software package, which can store and process recorded data. The results indicate obviously higher values of fractal dimension for HSV-infected biological samples when compared with non-infected biological samples. This allows us to clearly discriminate between virus-infected and non-infected biological samples.

Keywords: light scattering spectroscopy; LSS; spectra; signal analysis; Mie scattering; fractal dimension; cell nuclei; infected HeLa cells; size distribution; virus infections; biological samples; non-infected samples.

DOI: 10.1504/IJFIPM.2008.018292

International Journal of Functional Informatics and Personalised Medicine, 2008 Vol.1 No.1, pp.53 - 67

Published online: 14 May 2008 *

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