Method of compensating for offset distortion in rows of electrophoretic patterns

A signal processing method for determining base sequence of nucleic acids by subjecting digital signals to signal processing, said digital signals corresponding to an autoradiograph of plural resolved rows which are formed by resolving a mixture of base-specific DNA fragments or base-specific RNA fragments labeled with a radioactive element in one-dimensional direction on a support medium, which comprises steps of:

• (1) detecting at least two bands in the lower part of each resolved row and numbering the bands consecutively from the lower end;
• (2) obtaining correlation between the band's number and a resolved distance thereof for each resolved row;
• (3) determining difference in the resolved distance between the resolved rows from the resulting correlation and making correction for resolved position on each row by taking said difference as locational deviation of the rows from each other;
• and
• (4) detecting all bands on every resolved row and determining the sequence of the bands on the basis of their positions.

A signal processing method for determining base sequence of nucleic acids by subjecting digital signals to signal processing, said digital signals corresponding to an autoradiograph of plural resolved rows which are formed by resolving a mixture of base-specific DNA fragments or base-specific RNA fragments labeled with a radioactive element in one-dimensional direction on a support medium, which comprises steps of:

• (1) detecting at least two bands in the lower part of each resolved row and numbering the bands consecutively from the lower end;
• (2) obtaining correlation between the band's number and a resolved distance thereof for each resolved row;
• (3) determining difference in the resolved distance between the resolved rows from the resulting correlation;
• (4) detecting at least one band in the more upper part of each resolved row, making correction for resolved position on each band by taking the resulting difference as locational deviation of the rows from each other, and then numbering the bands consecutively on the basis of their positions;
• (5) obtaining the correlation between the band's number and the resolved distance with respect to the previously detected bands plus the band detected in the step (4) for each resolved row;
• and
• (6) determining the sequence of all bands on every resolved row on the basis of their corrected positions by repeating the steps (3) to (5).