Integrity of RNA samples was measured in parallel based on the RNA Integrity Number metrics using an artificial neural network trained to distinguish between different RNA integrity levels by examining the shape of the microcapillary electrophoretic traces (see Materials and Methods). Over the 399 RNA profiles checked, 363 (91%) were scored successfully ( Figure 4A) , with an average RIN of 7.7 (IC 7.4-8.0). The remaining 36 (9%) samples were associated with various unexpected signals, disturbing computation of the RIN using default anomaly detection parameters. In each case, a flag alert was added corresponding to critical anomalies including unexpected data in sample type, (or) ribosomal ratio, (or) baseline and signal in the 5S region (data not shown).