Patent ID: 7356184

Claim:
A method of identifying differently-dyed beads in an array of beads, comprising: generating a template cluster map from a first array of differently-dyed beads in which beads dyed with the same dye or dyes are clustered separately from each other; generating a project cluster map from a different array of the differently-dyed beads in which beads dyed with the same dye or dyes are are located in different regions; forming boundaries around individual clusters in the template cluster map and designating each cluster with an identifier; transforming the template cluster map to a template image plot, and transforming the project cluster map to a project image plot, wherein regions in the image plots are representations of the density of beads in a particular area in the cluster maps, and wherein the identifiers in the template cluster map are transferred to the corresponding regions in the template image plot; forming a first boundary around all the clusters in the template image plot, and forming a second boundary around all the clusters in the project image plot; establishing the positional relationship between the first and second boundaries; forming boundaries around the individual identified regions in the template image plot; transforming said boundaries to the project image plot using said positional relationship between the first and second boundaries, to establish a set of search boundaries; locating the densest regions in the project image plot using the search boundaries; applying the watershed algorithm to the densest regions in the project image plot to generate expanded, partitioned regions; correlating the identified regions in the template image plot with their respective expanded, partitioned regions in the project image plot; and correlating the beads in the project cluster map with the respective expanded, partitioned regions in the project image plot and thereby identifying differently-dyed beads in the project cluster map.