Automatic Threshold Setting for Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction

Applied Biosystems Mathematics, 2000-01

Liaison(s): Kenneth Livak ’74
Advisor(s): Lesley Ward
Students(s): Cameron McLeman ’02 (TL), Tae Jensen ’02, Justin Lyon, Bryan Tysinger

Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) is a process used to amplify a small unknown amount of DNA and determine how much of the given DNA species was initially present. This calculation depends on the selection of an appropriate threshold fluorescence value in the middle of the exponential region of the reaction’s amplification plot. Our task is to automate the selection of this threshold. We use linear regressions and Gaussian probability distributions.