Pulsed-Field Gel Elec rophoresis Pa ern Recogni ion of Bac erial DNA: A Systemic Approach

Pulsed-Field Gel Electrophoresis (PFGE) images contain ‘banding pattern’ information that can be used in bacterial identification.A systemic approach was designed to target the bacterial DNA PFGE pattern recognition problem that requires image processing, feature extraction, data pre-processing, classification and final decision-making. This paper describes the research, development and testing of a complete system to address this identification problem, including Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (ROC) analysis. Variations due to gel preparation in various laboratories by different technicians are considered. The approach was applied to recognition of E. coli O157:H7 bacteria with excellent results.