Patent ID: 8190371

Claim:
A method of quantifying a target in an experimental sample comprising: a) measuring a nucleic acid detection assay signal at a plurality of time intervals from an experimental sample and at least two standard control samples containing known target copy numbers that are different, thereby generating signal data; b) providing said signal data to a computer system, wherein said computer system has stored therein a target quantifying software application; c) processing said signal data with said target quantifying software application such that said target quantifying software: i) generates a threshold signal line having i) an initial signal value at time zero, and ii) a threshold slope; wherein said threshold signal line is above background level and intersects said experimental curve and two or more of said at least two standard control curves; ii) processes said signal data and said threshold signal line to generate an experimental intersecting time value and at least two standard control intersecting time values; iii) processes said at least two standard control intersecting time values and said known target copy numbers to generate log plot data comprising coordinates for a log/log plot, or a linear/log plot, of said intersecting time values versus said known target copy numbers; iv) processes said log plot data to generate a slope equation describing a resulting slope fit to said log plot data; and v) processes said experimental intersecting time value with said slope equation to generate a quantified target copy number for said experimental sample; and d) transmitting said quantified target copy number to a user interface display.