An algorithm to straighten the bent human chromosomes

摘要

The chromosomes are the genetic information carriers. Any alteration either in the structure of the chromosomes or the number of chromosomes present inside a cell, results in a medical condition termed as genetic defects. The chromosomes are non-rigid objects, they appear in different orientations such as straight, bent, touching or overlapping. Due to this it is very difficult to study the structure of the chromosomes and uncover the genetic defects related to the structural abnormalities. In this work an algorithm is being proposed to straighten the bent chromosomes, in which straight chromosomes are reconstructed using the pixel positions along the bending point of the bent chromosome. It is an iterative procedure which can detect and correct any number of bends in the chromosomes. The straight chromosome thus reconstructed is verified by using density profile, centromere position. The chromosomes thus straightened by the proposed method can be used to uncover the structural abnormalities present in the chromosomes with good accuracy. The experimental results show that the density profiles and the centromere index of the straightened chromosomes by the proposed method are very well correlated to the density profiles and centromere index of the bent chromosomes.