Data acquisition and measurement of characteristic functionals in biology and medicine
AssigneeArizona Board of Regents on Behalf of the University of Arizona
InventorsLuca Caucci, Harrison H. Barrett
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Many biologic processes taking place inside a living organism are unpredictable in time and space, and cannot be known exactly. These mechanisms and interactions among them are better modeled as physiological random processes, the statistics of which are fully described by joint characteristic functionals. The present invention provides methods for the estimation of joint characteristic functionals through imaging of multiple physiological random processes. This technology can be used to study complex diseases, such as tumors and viral infections, by imaging the biological processes involved with disease progression and response to treatment.
Claims21
A method for modeling a biological process in a cell or tissue comprising the steps of:
- a) performing multiple imaging scans of one or more cells or tissues containing a selected biological process of interest;
- b) generating image data of one or more physical characteristics related to the selected biological process;
- c) calculating or estimating a characteristic functional from said image data for the one or more physical characteristics;
- and
- d) analyzing the characteristic functional to extract information from the biological process,
- wherein the physical characteristics related to the selected biological process comprise:
- i) presence of one or more molecules or structures in the cell or tissue;
- ii) quantity of one or more molecules or structures in the cell or tissue;
- iii) location of one or more molecules or structures within the cell or tissue;
- iv) binding of one or more molecules to a second molecule;
- v) conformational structure of one or more molecules;
- vi) size of one or more structures;
- or
- vii) combinations thereof,
- wherein the biological process is a disease related to mutations of mTOR signaling pathways or intestinal epithelium growth.
A method for modeling a biological process in a cell or tissue comprising the steps of:
- a) labeling one or more proteins within one or more cells or tissues containing a selected biological process of interest with a fluorescent peptide;
- b) performing multiple imaging scans of the one or more cells or tissues containing the selected biological process, wherein the one or more proteins are labelled with the fluorescent peptide prior to performing the multiple imaging scans;
- c) generating image data of one or more physical characteristics related to the selected biological process;
- d) calculating or estimating a characteristic functional from said image data for the one or more physical characteristics;
- and
- e) analyzing the characteristic functional to extract information from the selected biological process,
- wherein the physical characteristics related to the selected biological process comprise:
- i) presence of one or more molecules or structures in the cell or tissue;
- ii) quantity of one or more molecules or structures in the cell or tissue;
- iii) location of one or more molecules or structures within the cell or tissue;
- iv) binding of one or more molecules to a second molecule;
- v) conformational structure of one or more molecules;
- vi) size of one or more structures;
- or
- vii) combinations thereof.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.